The Present Tense in Spanish

February 6, 2019
/ Spanish Grammar
/ By Annabel Beilby

Okay, so you know a bit of Spanish vocabulary, and now you want to know how to use it in sentences. The best place to start? Right here, right now, with the present tense!

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Three types of verb

The good news...

Null-subject language

Irregular verbs

Stem-changing verbs

Good job!

Three types of verb

To form sentences in the present tense, we need to know how to conjugate verbs with the correct present tense endings.

In Spanish, verbs can be split into three main types:

-ar
-er
-ir

Each group has its own conjugation pattern. To conjugate a verb, you need to remove the infinitive ending (-ar, -er, or -ir) and add on the appropriate present tense ending.

-ar verbs

Let’s take the common -ar verb hablar (to talk) as an example.

First, you remove the -ar.

Hablar → habl-

Then you add one of the following endings:

Yo (I)	-o	Nosotros (We)	-amos
Tú (You)	-as	Vosotros (You plural)	-áis
Él/ella/usted (He/she/it/you formal)	-a	Ellos/ellas/ustedes (They/you formal plural)	-an

For example, ‘I talk’ would be: habl- + -o → hablo

So, what we end up with a conjugation table like this:

Yo	hablo	Nosotros	hablamos
Tú	hablas	Vosotros	habláis
Él/ella/usted	habla	Ellos/ellas/ustedes	hablan

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-er verbs

This table shows you the present tense endings for -er verbs:

Yo (I)	-o	Nosotros (We)	-emos
Tú (You)	-es	Vosotros (You plural)	-éis
Él/ella/usted (He/she/it/you formal)	-e	Ellos/ellas/ustedes (They/you formal* plural)	-en

*In this article, we refer to ustedes as being formal (as it is in most of Spain). But remember that in most of Latin America, this form is used even in familiar contexts when addressing a group of people!

One of the most common -er verbs is vender (to sell). The conjugation table looks like this:

Yo	vendo	Nosotros	vendemos
Tú	vendes	Vosotros	vendéis
Él/ella/usted	vende	Ellos/ellas/ustedes	venden

-ir verbs

Yo (I)	-o	Nosotros (We)	*-imos*
Tú (You)	-es	Vosotros (You plural)	*-ís*
Él/ella/usted (He/she/it/you formal)	-e	Ellos/ellas/ustedes (They/you formal plural)	*-en*

The common verb vivir (to live) is conjugated like this:

Yo	vivo	Nosotros	vivimos
Tú	vives	Vosotros	vivís
Él/ella/usted	vive	Ellos/ellas/ustedes	viven

The good news...

That may feel like a lot of tables, but don’t be overwhelmed! If we simplify things a little, you’ll see that there aren’t actually that many differences. Check out this table which shows them side by side.

-ar	-er	<strong>-ir
-o	-o	-o
-as	-es	-es
-a	-e	-e
-amos	-emos	-imos
-áis	-éis	-ís
-an	-en	-en

Not so bad, right?

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Null-subject language

Spanish is what we call a ‘null-subject language.’

This means that, due to the variety of endings, we can leave out the subject and still make sense. Take the verb vender as an example. In English, most of the verb endings are the same:

I	sell	We	sell
You	sell	You (plural)	sell
He/she/it	sells	They	sell

So if you were to say ‘sell houses’ you’d have no idea who is doing the selling. For that reason, in English we have to include the subject, to differentiate between ‘I sell houses,’ ‘you sell houses,’ ‘we sell houses,’ and ‘they sell houses.’

But in Spanish, each person pretty much has its own verb ending. So if I say ‘vendo casas,’ it’s perfectly clear that it’s me selling the houses, because of the ‘o’ at the end. There’s no need to say ‘yo vendo casas.’

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