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Hopefully you have a basic understanding of what a verb (a doing word) is and what a tense (a time frame) is but if you are unsure, take a look at ‘So what is a verb?‘ and ‘What is a Tense?‘. These will help you get an idea before you read on about how to form/conjugate the Present tense. If you are ready to learn about the present tense, let’s go…

When do we use the present tense?

We use the present tense to say what we do at the present time or what we are presently doing.

For example. I eat/I am eating and I speak/I am speaking.

There are rules around how to form/conjugate/change a verb so that you can say who is doing it, however there are some verbs that don’t follow the rules. For now, we’ll just deal with the verbs that do follow the rules (the regular verbs), once you are confident in using these, you could take a look at the Irregular Verbs.

How to form/conjugate the present tense with Regular Verbs:

To talk in the present tense you need to take the infinitive in English (head of the family), take off the ‘to’ and add the person to the front so that it tells you who is actually doing the action.

For example:

1. To run
2. _____ run
3. I run

In Spanish you do something similar but instead of manipulating/changing the front of the verb (we call this the stem) you have to manipulate/change the end.

In a nutshell… You have to take off the last two letters of the infinitive and replace them with new letters.

Let’s look at the trusty (regular) verb HABLAR

1) Take the infinitive:

Hablar = to speak

2) Take away the last two letters from the Spanish infinitive (-ar) and the first two letters from the English infinitive (to). It leaves you with:

Habl___ = ____ speak

3) Add your new letters accordingly:

Hablo = I speak

Here’s all the endings for verb infinitives that end in ‘-AR’

Hablar	To speak
(yo) hablo	I speak / I am speaking
(tú) hablas *	You speak / You are speaking *
(él/ella) habla	He/she/it speaks / He/she/it is speaking
(nosotros/ as) hablamos	We speak / We are speaking
(vosotros/ as) habláis	All of you speak / All of you are speaking
(ellos/ ellas) hablan	They speak / They are speaking

You’ll notice that the ‘yo’, ‘tú’, ‘ella’ etc are in brackets. This is because you have the option to leave off the ‘yo’, ‘tú’, ‘ella’ etc. In English you can’t leave off the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ etc because the verb looks the same for nearly every formation, so it would be super confusing and we would not know who is doing the action.

In Spanish, the new endings are all different and therefore you can tell who the verb is talking about and so there is no real reason for the ‘yo’ and ‘tú’ etc. By the way, these are called pronouns! Take a look at my jargon buster page for a bit more info on these.

You will probably find that the only pronouns you will use a fair bit are ‘él’ and ‘ella’ because the verb form is the same for both and therefore without adding the pronouns, for example ‘él habla‘ or ‘ella habla‘ it wouldn’t always be obvious if you mean ‘he speaks‘ or ‘she speaks‘.

Regular ‘-ER’ verbs in Spanish:

As mentioned, in English, all infinitives start with ‘to’. However, in Spanish it’s about how the infinitive ends. We have seen ‘-AR’ verbs and how to manipulate/form/conjugate them. However there are 2 more groups… ‘-ER‘ verbs and ‘-IR‘ verbs.

Here’s all the endings for verb infinitives that end in ‘-ER’

Comer	To eat
(yo) como	I eat / I am eating
(tú) comes *	You eat / You are eating *
(él/ella) come	He/she/it eats / He/she/it is eating
(nosotros/as) comemos	We eat / We are eating
(vosotros/as) coméis	All of you eat / All of you are eating
(ellos/ellas) comen	They eat / They are eating

Now let’s look at the final group… Regular -IR ending verbs in Spanish:

Here’s all the endings for verb infinitives that end in ‘-IR’

Vivir	To live
(yo) vivo	I live/ I am living
(tú) vives *	You live/ You are living *
(él/ella) vive	He/she/it lives / He/she/it is living
(nosotros/as) vivimos	We live/ We are living
(vosotros/as) vivís	All of you live/ All of you are living
(ellos/ellas) viven	They live/ They are living

* It’s all about you!

You may have noticed that in the verb tables, there was an ‘*‘ next to the formations for ‘you‘. Here is why…

Using the word ‘you’ can be tricky in Spanish because they have more than one way to say ‘you‘.

In these verb tables and examples we have used ‘tú’ to say ‘you…’ but as mentioned above, there is another way. However, in my experience it’s best to keep things simple and learn one way at a time.

Here we have dealt with ‘tú‘ and this is the word we use when speaking informally, to friends and family etc. The other way to say ‘you…’ is ‘usted‘ and it is the way we speak formally to people we don’t know or when we need to show extra respect.

When you are ready, you can find out all about how to use ‘usted‘ by reading: It’s all about ‘you’! Understanding ‘usted’.

In conclusion

The present tense is a really useful tense and once you get used to the 3 sets of endings you’ll find yourself using it more confidently. Start with the -AR endings and then work on the -ER endings, followed by the -IR endings. Just be careful not to get caught out on the similarities and differences between -ER and -IR verbs.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, unfortunately, not all verbs (doing words) behave themselves in the present tense and there are a fair few irregular rebels. You can find out about them HERE but for now, why not have a go at our interactive practice activities and when you gain more confidence you can take on the Irregulars in the Present Tense.

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