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Information about Spanish Irregular Verbs

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Spanish verbs are a complex area of Spanish grammar, with many combinations of tenses, aspects and moods (up to fifty conjugated forms per verb). While conjugation rules are relatively straightforward, a large number of verbs are irregular. Among these, some fall into more-or-less defined deviant patterns, while others are uniquely irregular. This article tries to summarize the common irregular patterns.

Vowel-alternating verbs

Vowel-alternating verbs, also known as stem-changing verbs, have two stems; one is the common infinitive stem (the one that serves to conjugate regular verbs) and the other derives from it by a vowel change. The change turns e into ie and o into ue when the syllable in question is stressed, which in effect happens only in the singular persons and third-person plural of the present indicative, present subjunctive, and present imperative. (Note that the dictionary form always has the vowel, not the diphthong, since in the infinitive form the stress is on the last syllable, i.e. on the thematic vowel.)

For example (only some persons and tenses, for contrasting purposes):
  • acertar → yo acierto, él acierta, nosotros acertamos, ellos aciertan; que yo acierte; yo acerté, él acertó...
  • soldar → yo sueldo, él suelda, nosotros soldamos, ellos sueldan; que yo suelde; yo soldé, él soldó...
  • perder → yo pierdo, él pierde, nosotros perdemos, ellos pierden; que yo pierda; yo perdí, él perdió...
  • mentir → yo miento, él miente, nosotros mentimos, ellos mienten; que yo mienta; yo mentí, él mintió...
  • apostar → yo apuesto, él apuesta, nosotros apostamos, ellos apuestan; que yo apueste; yo aposté, él apostó...
  • moler → yo muelo, él muele, nosotros molemos, ellos muelen; que yo muela; yo molí, él molió...
To complicate matters further, vowel-alternating verbs in the third conjugation (-ir) furthermore change e to i and o to u in certain unstressed cases — the third person singular and plural of the present subjunctive (and imperative, when the subjunctive is used as the imperative) and the second and third persons plural of the preterite:
  • mentir → que yo mienta, que él mienta, que nosotros mintamos; yo mentí, él mintió, nosotros mentimos...
  • concebir → yo concibo, él concibe, nosotros concebimos; yo concebí, él concibió...
In some dialects, the second-person singular present tense is different, and gets stressed on the last syllable instead of the root, so the alternation does not take place: tú pides becomes vos pedís, tú mueres becomes vos morís. See Voseo for details.

Many verbs with e or o in the root do not alternate (e.g. meter, comer, etc.), and they are often a source of mistakes for children learning to speak, and also for some adults.
  • rebosar → *yo rebueso, *él rebuesa... instead of yo reboso, él rebosa...

G-verbs

The so-called G-verbs (sometimes "yo-go" verbs) add a medial -g- in the first person singular, present tense (-ig- when the root ends in a vowel). Many of these verbs are also irregular in other ways. For example:

poner: yo pongo, tú pones...
tener: yo tengo, tú tienes...
caer: yo caigo, tú caes...
traer: yo traigo, tú traes...
oír: yo oigo, tú oyes...

Anomalous stems

Some verbs (including most G-verbs) have a completely different stem in the preterite. This stem is anomalous also because it is stressed in some persons (while in all other cases the preterite gets the stress over the suffix).

poner → pus-: yo puse, tú pusiste, él puso, nosotros pusimos...
estar → estuv-: yo estuve, tú estuviste, él estuvo, nosotros estuvimos...
hacer → hic-, hiz-: yo hice, tú hiciste, él hizo, nosotros hicimos...
andar → anduv-: yo anduve, tú anduviste, él anduvo, nosotros anduvimos...
decir → dij-: yo dije, tú dijiste, él dijo, nosotros dijimos...
tener → tuv-: yo tuve, tú tuviste, él tuvo, nosotros tuvimos...


Some verbs also change their stem in the future and conditional tenses:
tener → tendr-: yo tendré, tú tendrás, él tendrá...
hacer → har-: yo haré, tú harás, él hará...
decir → dir-: yo diré, tú dirás, él dirá...
haber → habr-: yo habré, tú habrás, él habrá...


Yet some other verbs take several different (but phonetically related) stems, in the most irregular fashion:

caber: yo quepo, tú cabes, él cabe...; yo cupe, tú cupiste, él cupo...
saber: yo sé, tú sabes...; yo supe, tú supiste...; yo sabía, tú sabías...; yo sepa, tú sepas
haber: yo he, tú has, él ha, nosotros hemos, vosotros habéis, ellos han

Others

The verbs 'ser' (to be) and 'ir' (to go) both exhibit irregularities in the present, imperfect and preterite tenses.

Present indicative tense
serir
yosoyvoy
tú/voseres/sosvas
él, ellaesva
nosotrossomosvamos
vosotrossoisvais
ellos, ellassonvan
Imperfect indicative
serir
yoeraiba
túerasibas
él, ellaeraiba
nosotroséramosíbamos
vosotroseraisibais
ellos, ellaseraniban
Preterite
serir
yofuifui
túfuistefuiste
él, ellafuefue
nosotrosfuimosfuimos
vosotrosfuisteisfuisteis
ellos, ellasfueronfueron

 Spanish, Castilian}}} 
Writing system: Latin (Spanish variant)
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: —
ISO 639-3: —

Spanish (
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Spanish (español) and Castilian (castellano). Originally Castilian referred to the language of the Kingdom of Castile that spread across Spain.
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Spanish language developed from vulgar Latin, with influence from Basque in the north and Arabic in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula (see Iberian Romance languages).
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phonology of the Spanish language. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof, including geographical variants (for details, see the articles on History of the Spanish language and Spanish dialects and varieties).
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Spanish dialects and varieties are the regional variants of the Spanish language, some of which are quite divergent from standard written Spanish, which is based on the dialect of the province of Castile.
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Spanish orthography is one of the most phonemic among those that are written with the Latin alphabet. For detailed information on the pronunciation not found here, see also Spanish phonology.
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Spanish language

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la Barcelona de Gaudí
  • el Londres de Dickens
  • Agree with the underlying noun el pueblo or la ciudad
  • Nueva York
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    • La vi a ella and "He gave it to me" becomes Me lo dió a mí (see also clitic doubling for the use of reduplicated pronouns).

    Comitative case (prepositional complement preceded by the preposition "con" (with))

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    Spanish language

    Names for the language
    History
    Pronunciation
    Dialects
    Writing system
    Grammar:
    • Determiners
    • Nouns
    • Pronouns
    • Adjectives
    • Prepositions
    • Verbs
    • Conjugation

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    a Ana. = "I sent Ana the letter", "I sent the letter to Ana."
  • ''¿Le(s) regalaste el coche a tus padres? = "Did you give your parents the car (as a gift)?", "Did you give the car to
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    • Spanish verbs are one of the most complex areas of Spanish grammar. Spanish is a synthetic language with a moderate-to-high degree of inflection which shows up mostly in the verb conjugation.
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    Spanish language

    Names for the language
    History
    Pronunciation
    Dialects
    Writing system
    Grammar:
    • Determiners
    • Nouns
    • Pronouns
    • Adjectives
    • Prepositions
    • Verbs
    • Conjugation

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    Spanish verbs are one of the most complex areas of Spanish grammar. Spanish is a synthetic language with a moderate-to-high degree of inflection which shows up mostly in the verb conjugation.
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (regular alteration according to rules of grammar). Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories.
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    In contrast to regular verbs, irregular verbs are those verbs that fall outside the standard patterns of conjugation in the languages in which they occur.

    What counts as an irregular verb is strongly dependent on the language itself.
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      In linguistics, a stem is the part of a word that is common to all its inflected variants. Stems are often roots, i.e. atomic (unanalyzable) lexical morphemes, but a stem can also be morphologically complex, as seen with compound words (cf.
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      In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual (traditional) description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be
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        thought"
      • Past participle: "thought"
      • Gerund/progressive (the present participle): "thinking"
      As a result, there are various ways of defining an irregular verb.
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      In phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (Greek δίφθογγος, "diphthongos", literally "with two sounds," or "with two tones") is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to
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      voseo is the use of the second person singular pronoun vos instead of tú; tú is often considered the standard, but vos is much more common in many dialects.
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      preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, simple past, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. It is similar to the aorist in languages such as Greek.
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      Present Tense
      (1968) The Blue Marble
      (1969)

      Present Tense is the first Sagittarius album, released in 1968 by Columbia Records.
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      The imperfect tense, in the classical grammar of several Indo-European languages, denotes a past tense with an imperfective aspect. In English, it is referred to as the past continuous tense.
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      preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, simple past, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. It is similar to the aorist in languages such as Greek.
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