There's a rumor going around that Spanish verbs are difficult and confusing. You might even be afraid to try to learn them. There's no need to worry, Spanish verbs can be learned with just a little attention.
One thing people don't realize is that English verbs are, in many ways, similar to Spanish verbs. For instance, you will often hear the complaint that it's hard to learn Spanish verbs because you have to conjugate them. Conjugating verbs just means matching up the right verb form for each "person," like I, you, he, she, we, or they.
What people don't seem to understand is that we conjugate English words as well. So, for instance, we say "I have," but we say "she has." When you learn Spanish, you will conjugate verbs in the same way.
The only difference is that you have diverse forms for more of the "persons." When you learn Spanish verbs, you will learn a special form each for "I", "you", "we", "they", and another form for "he", "she", or "it." Another thing that makes it easy to learn Spanish verbs is that these verb forms are just based on mostly standard endings. Once you know the endings, you can apply them to the infinitives.
Infinitives are the most basic forms of the verbs. All verbs in English have an infinitive form, but most people aren't aware of it. The English infinitive starts with the word "to," as in "to have." Spanish infinitives are single words, like "tener," meaning "to have" also. If you learn Spanish infinitives, you will have a good start when you learn Spanish verbs.
As you learn Spanish, you will find that some of the words are different. Just as in English, there are irregular verbs. The English verb "to be" is conjugated "I am," "you are," "she is," "we are," and "they are." Since these forms are not the usual infinitive with an ending, they constitute an irregular verb.
When you learn Spanish, you will learn verbs that follow similar patterns. Using the same example, for the Spanish verb "ser," the forms are "yo soy," "tu eres," "ella es," "nosotros estamos," and "ellos estan." These are also irregular verb forms.
The final set of forms you will need to learn Spanish are the tenses. In English, the past tense for "jump" is "jumped". This is a regular past tense. An example of a verb with an irregular past tense is "go." Its past tense is "went."
As you learn Spanish, you will find out how to make the endings for each tense: present, past, past perfect, and so on. You will also learn Spanish irregular endings for verbs in the different tenses. With all this knowledge under your belt, along with information on the other parts of speech, you should be able to carry on an intelligent conversation.
Certainly, there is a lot to understand as you learn Spanish verbs. There are many words and verb forms to remember. However, if you remember that English has many of the same structures, you will find that it's not so confusing.
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