El arte de las conjugaciones de los verbos

The art of verb conjugation

What is a verb conjugation? It's simply the form of the verb that tells you WHO is doing an action. Here is a verb conjugation chart in English, which shows the different conjugations.

Infinitive: TO BE (infinitive means it is the unconjugated, dictionary form)

Infinitive: TO WALK

In English, verb conjugations are NOT a big deal. Most verbs are like ‘walk’. All the conjugations are the same except the 3^rd person singular. However, in many languages, including Spanish, conjugations are more important for two reasons. 1) the endings are all different 2) natives speakers don't usually use the subject pronoun (I, you, she, we), so in order to tell who is doing something you have to look at the conjugation/ verb ending. For example, these would be translated differently: ‘tiene’ (he or she has) and ‘tienes'’ (you have). The ending on the verb tells you who is doing it.

Below, conjugate the verb ‘to have’ in English. Fill in the chart exactly as above:

Infinitive: _________________

Las Conjugaciones en español

To conjugate a verb in Spanish, you do the same thing, but there are different endings for each conjugation. Let’s take the verb caminar, to walk. These are the endings in Spanish for most Spanish verbs where the infinitive ends in 'ar' (estudiar, caminar, bailar, hablar etc.):

**To put on the correct ending, chop off the 'ar' and put on the endings in bold**

Infinitive: caminar, to walk

**Notice how all the endings (in bold) are different, unlike the English verb 'to walk'. This is why the subject pronouns (yo, tú etc.) are optional in Spanish. The ending tells you who is doing it:

• tengo una pregunta

• ¿Cuántos años tienes ?

• Bob es loco. Tiene 83 gatos en su baño.

Práctica con las conjugaciones de verbos

Choose any three of the following -ar verb infinitives, and do a conjugation chart for each:

Patinar, hablar, gritar, llorar, estudiar, llamar

Infinitive: _________________

Infinitive: _________________

Infinitive: _________________

Infinitive: _________________

Infinitive: _________________

Infinitive: _________________