Conjugating Verbs
A large amount of learning Spanish deals with "conjugations." Conjugating is taking a verb and
making it agree with the subject. In English we do it all the time without even thinking about it. Take
a sentence with "John" as a subject and "to have" as a verb:
John has a ladder.
In order for the subject and verb to agree, we need to change our verb, "to have," into "has."
It sounds funny when a verb is conjugated incorrectly:
I has a ladder.
In order to agree with the subject, "to have" obviously should have been
conjugated as "have."
Before we get into verb conjugations, let's look at our six possible
subjects: I, you, he, she, it, we, you all, and they.
(For simplicity's sake, other sentence subjects such a "Robert," "Ellen," "the toaster," "Charles and I,"
and "the cars," etc. function the same way as "he," "she," "it," "we," and "they.")
To help better understand, we take these subjects and arrange them into a grid based on
person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd) and number (singular or plural):
singular:
plural:
I
we
2nd person:
you
you all
3rd person:
he, she, it
they
1st person:
First-person singular refers to the fact that the speaker or writer is referring to himself or
herself ("I"). Second-person singular involves speaking or writing directly to someone else ("you"),
and third person-singular is writing or speaking about another person or thing("he," "she," or "it").
If you add another person to any of these situations, you end up with a plural subject: "I" becomes
"we"; "you" becomes "you all" (or "y'all" or "you guys"); and "he," "she," or "it" becomes "they."
Make sure you understand this grid. It's very important; you'll be seeing a lot of it as you
study Spanish.
Now let's examine some conjugations. Look at the grid for the English (present tense) conjugations
of "to have":
singular:
plural:
1st person:
have
have
2nd person:
have
have
3rd person:
has
have
Notice that there's really only one difference in all the conjugations and that it occurs in the thirdperson singular.
I have a ladder.
John has a ladder.
Spanish on the other hand is more complicated. Let's look at the present tense Spanish conjugations
of "hablar" (to speak):
singular:
plural:
hablo
hablamos
2nd person:
hablas
habláis
3rd person:
habla
hablan
1st person:
You should notice that, unlike English, there is a different conjugation for each subject.
Spanish:
Yo hablo Español.
Tú hablas Español.
English:
I speak Spanish.
You speak Spanish.
As a consequence we may omit the subject since it cannot be confused with anything else:
Spanish:
Hablamos Español.
English:
(We) speak Spanish.
The same cannot be said of English where we need to explicitly identify the subject:
Speak Spanish. → (?) speak Spanish.
At this point we should take a closer look at the possible subjects in Spanish. The English subjects
look like this:
singular:
plural:
I
we
2nd person:
you
you all
3rd person:
he, she, it
they
1st person:
And the Spanish subjects look like this:
singular:
plural:
1st person:
yo
nosotros
2nd person:
tú
vosotros
3rd person:
él, ella
ellos, ellas
Note: We do not explicitly use "it" as a subject in Spanish: ("Es bonito." → "It is beautiful.")
However, you may already know that when using Spanish we actually have two different possibilities
for the 2nd person. One is formal (Usted/ustedes) and the other informal (tú, vosotros). Therefore
our Spanish subject chart should more accurately look like this:
singular:
plural:
1st person:
yo
nosotros
2nd person (informal):
tú
Vosotros
Usted
Ustedes
él, ella
ellos, ellas
2nd person (formal):
3rd person:
When filling in the same chart with verb conjugations (once again for "hablar") you should notice
something:
singular:
plural:
hablo
Hablamos
hablas
Habláis
2nd person (formal):
habla
hablan
3rd person:
habla
hablan
1st person:
2nd person (informal):
The conjugations for the second-person plural formal, are exactly the same as the conjugations for
the 3rd person. To simplify things then, even though they are actually second-person forms, "Usted"
and "Ustedes" are added to the 3rd person box in the conjugation grid:
singular:
plural:
1st person:
yo
nosotros
2nd person:
tú
vosotros
él, ella, Ud.
ellos,
ellas, Uds.
3rd person:
Note: The second person, plural, informal "vosotros" form is mainly used in Spain. "Ustedes" is used
regardless of the level of formality throughout Latin America.