Learn about the Spanish tenses
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Intro |
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| Michael: How many tenses are there in Spanish? |
| Cesar: And how do they work? |
| Michael: At SpanishPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Sasha Lee is confused about the number of tenses in Spanish. She asks a befriended teacher, Sonia Hernandez Acevedo, |
| "How many tenses are there in Spanish?" |
| Sasha Lee: ¿Cuántos tiempos verbales hay en español? |
| Dialogue |
| Sasha Lee: ¿Cuántos tiempos verbales hay en español? |
| Sonia Hernández Acevedo: Hay tres tiempos principales. |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Sasha Lee: ¿Cuántos tiempos verbales hay en español? |
| Michael: "How many tenses are there in Spanish?" |
| Sonia Hernández Acevedo: Hay tres tiempos principales. |
| Michael: "There are 3 main tenses." |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: In the conversation, Sasha Lee asks: |
| Cesar: ¿Cuántos tiempos verbales hay en español? |
| Michael: meaning: "How many tenses are there in Spanish?," to which Sonia replies: "There are 3 main tenses.," or in Spanish: |
| Cesar: Hay tres tiempos principales. |
| Michael: The tense of a verb shows when the action happens, either in the "past," or, in Spanish: |
| Cesar: pasado |
| Michael: In the "present": |
| Cesar: presente |
| Michael: Or in the "future": |
| Cesar: futuro |
| Michael: These are the three main verb tenses in Spanish that we'll talk more about in this lesson. The present tense is used to show what a subject is doing or usually does. For example: |
| Cesar: Siempre llego a la oficina temprano. |
| Michael: "I always arrive at the office early." In this example, the verb "to arrive," or in Spanish: |
| Cesar: llegar |
| Michael: is conjugated for the first person of speech, "I," in the present tense: |
| Cesar: llego |
| Michael: Spanish verbs, in the infinitive form, end in either |
| Cesar: -ar |
| Michael: for first conjugation verbs, |
| Cesar: -er |
| Michael: for second conjugation verbs, or |
| Cesar: -ir |
| Michael: for third conjugation verbs. In the case of regular verbs, verbs with the same ending will follow the same conjugation pattern. As a rule, you'll remove the ending ("-AR," "-ER," or "-IR") and add the ending for each person of speech ("I," "you," "he"/"she," etc.) for a certain verb tense. For example, for the present tense of the verb "to study," or in Spanish: |
| Cesar: estudiar |
| Michael: It ends in "-AR" and is a regular verb. So, we remove the infinitive "-AR" ending (obtaining the verb stem) and add the ending for the person of speech that we want to talk about. For example, "I study Spanish.": |
| Cesar: Yo estudio español. |
| Michael: In this case, for the first person singular, "I," or: |
| Cesar: Yo, |
| Michael: we added |
| Cesar: -o |
| Michael: to the verb stem, obtaining the conjugated verb in the present tense: |
| Cesar: estudio |
| Michael: If we'd like to say, instead: "We study Spanish," we'd use: |
| Cesar: Nosotros estudiamos español. |
| Michael: We added |
| Cesar: -amos |
| Michael: to the verb stem, obtaining the conjugated verb in the present tense for the first person plural, "we," so that the verb became: |
| Cesar: estudiamos |
| Michael: In this lesson, we'll focus on the indicative verb mood only. The indicative mood states a fact and will have past, present, and future tenses. The examples we've just seen are in the present tense of the indicative mood. |
| To learn more about verb moods and about all verb endings per person of speech, please check out the verb conjugation series we listed in the Lesson Notes PDF. |
| In Spanish, there are different ways of expressing past actions. We'll focus on the "preterit," or: |
| Cesar: pretérito indefinido (pretérito perfecto simple) |
| Michael: The preterit tense of the indicative mood is used to express an event or action that happened and was completed at a specific time in the past. To form the preterit of regular verbs, we just need to add the preterit endings to the verb stem. So, for example, to say "I studied Spanish last week.": |
| Cesar: Yo estudié español la semana pasada |
| Michael: we just need to add the ending "-É" (with an accent) to the verb stem, which is the ending for the first person singular, "I," in the preterit of the indicative mood, so that we have: |
| Cesar: estudié |
| Michael: As the preterit expresses events or actions that were completed at a certain time in the past, it's common to use it with expressions that state a certain time period, for example: |
| Cesar: el año pasado |
| Michael: "last year" |
| Cesar: ayer |
| Michael: "yesterday" |
| Cesar: la semana passada |
| Michael: "last week." |
| So, let's check out one more example: |
| Cesar: Viajé mucho el año pasado. |
| Michael: "I traveled a lot last year." Next, there's the future tense. Here, we'll focus on the indicative mood's "absolute future," or in Spanish: |
| Cesar: futuro absoluto |
| Michael: Absolute future is used for a future action independent of any other action. We should think about this tense in relation to the modal verb "will" in English; however, depending on the context in which the future tense is used in Spanish, this modal verb can change to "might" or "could." |
| This tense is even simpler to form, as all regular verbs (regardless of their infinitive form ending, either "-AR," "-ER," or "-IR") will have the same future ending pattern, depending only on the person of speech. To form it, we'll add the endings to the verb in the infinitive form. So, for example, "to study": |
| Cesar: estudiar |
| Michael: We'll add the first person singular ending |
| Cesar: -É |
| Michael: to have it conjugated in the simple future tense for this person of speech, "I": |
| Cesar: estudiaré |
| Michael: For another verb with a different ending in the infinitive form, let's say: "to learn": |
| Cesar: aprender |
| Michael: which is a second conjugation verb, ending in "-ER," we'll add the same ending |
| Cesar: -É |
| Michael: to it to have it conjugated in the simple future tense for the first person singular: |
| Cesar: aprenderé |
| Michael: Let's see an example sentence with it: |
| Cesar: Aprenderé cómo hablar sobre eventos del pasado, presente y futuro. |
| Michael: "I'll learn how to talk about past, present, and future events." |
| [Summary] |
| Michael: In this lesson, you've learned that Spanish has three main verb tenses: past, present, and future. We've focused on the indicative mood, used to state a fact in either of these verb tenses, of regular verbs, studying the present, preterit, and absolute future tenses. |
| Now, let's look at some examples. Our first example is: |
| Cesar: Él bebe mucho café por la mañana. |
| Michael: "He drinks a lot of coffee in the morning." In this case, the verb "to drink," or in Spanish: |
| Cesar: beber |
| Michael: is a regular verb of the second conjugation (ending in "-ER"). As we've seen, to form the present tense, we remove the infinitive ending ("-ER") and, in this case, add the present tense ending for the third person singular form, which is "-E," obtaining: |
| Cesar: bebe |
| Michael: The next example is: |
| Cesar: Él bebió mucho vino en la fiesta anoche. |
| Michael: "He drank a lot of wine at the party last night." In the preterit tense, we also remove the infinitive ending of the verb ("-ER") and add the preterit tense ending, in this case, also for the third person singular form, which is |
| Cesar: -IÓ, |
| Michael: obtaining: |
| Cesar: bebió |
| Michael: The last example is: |
| Cesar: él beberá |
| Michael: "he will drink." In the absolute future tense, we just need to add the ending to the verb in the infinitive form—in this case, for the third person singular form, which is |
| Cesar: -Á, |
| Michael: obtaining: |
| Cesar: beberá |
| Expansion |
| Michael: We've focused on regular verbs until now, but there's one interesting note about irregular verbs: many of them follow the standard pattern endings in the absolute future tense, although they can be irregular in other tenses. For example, the verb "to go," or in Spanish: |
| Cesar: ir |
| Michael: is irregular in the present tense, including "I go": |
| Cesar: Yo voy |
| Michael: "You go" informal: |
| Cesar: Tu vas |
| Michael: and so on. The same happens in the preterite tense, which is also irregular, for example: "I went": |
| Cesar: Yo fui |
| Michael: "You went" informal: |
| Cesar: Tu fuiste |
| Michael: and so on. However, in the absolute future tense, they'll follow the standard pattern endings we've just studied, for example, for the first person singular, we just need to add the future tense ending |
| Cesar: -É |
| Michael: to the infinitive form of the verb, obtaining: |
| Cesar: Yo iré |
| Michael: "I will go." |
| And for "You will go" informal: |
| Cesar: Tú irás |
| Michael: We just had to add the standard future tense ending |
| Cesar: "-ÁS" |
| Michael: corresponding to the second person singular, to the infinitive form of the verb. |
| This is good news, as irregular verbs tend to require more time to be memorized. |
| Practice Section |
| Michael: Let's review. Respond to the prompts by speaking aloud. Then, repeat after Cesar, focusing on pronunciation. |
| Do you remember how Sasha Lee says "How many tenses are there in Spanish?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Cesar: ¿Cuántos tiempos verbales hay en español? |
| Michael: Listen again and repeat. |
| Cesar: ¿Cuántos tiempos verbales hay en español? |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Cesar: ¿Cuántos tiempos verbales hay en español? |
| Michael: And do you remember how Sonia says "There are three main tenses?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Cesar: Hay tres tiempos principales. |
| Michael: Listen again and repeat. |
| Cesar: Hay tres tiempos principales. |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Cesar: Hay tres tiempos principales. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Cesar: ¡Hasta la próxima! |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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