Summarized Table for verbs

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Last Updated: Friday, 02 May 2025 17:44

Published: Sunday, 10 March 2024 17:02

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Summarized Table for Past, Present and Future Tense of -ar, -er and -ir verbs for singular form only:

Here's are all 3 forms for 25 most commonly used verbs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDUuB5YohO4

Since singular form I and you are used so often, it makes sense to learn these ones, instead of trying to remember tables for all forms. Here is the concise table (I've put plural forms at bootom of table to keep everything in one table). I've highlighted the first 3 rows as that is going to be used most often. The "you all" form (5th row) is only when talking in Spaon, and you can avoid that altogether (darkened as red below).

TIPS:

1. Present tense of all verbs for first person "I" ends with "o", irrespective of whether the verb is -ar/-er/-ir. Present tense of you always ends in "s" (way to remember is that "you" in English is always treated as plural i.e "you are", so Spanish treats "you" as plural by adding "s" to conjugation), while 3rd person is treated as singular.
2. Past tense for -er/-ir follows -ir form (for all 6 entries), while Fuure tense for -er/-ir follows -er form (for only 3 entries. Other 3 entries follow ar form). It was probably done this way since -ir form got used for past tense, so -er got used for future to keep them little different. Way to remember is "future" has "e" in it, so er verb followed for future.
3. Future tense for any verb is recognized by seeing the full base verb + some suffix. i.e future tense of "I will speak" will be "hablar+é" = hablaré. Way to remember is Future means stretch the word, so the full base word is used. This way it stands out from all the other tenses, which truncate or modify the base infinitive verb.

Imperfect and Conditional (simple): Both are grouped in one table below, even though Imperfect is "past", while conditional is "future". This is since Conditional has same suffix as Imperfect (for -er/-ir). The only way to distinguish the 2 is that for Conditional, Base word remains same, while for Imperfect, base is modified to stem.

• Imperfect: It is similar to past tense, but is used where events didn't have specific duration. 2 situations (See in "Past Imperfect verb" section):
  • I was eating => yo estaba comiendo (estar form used with gerund)
  • i used to eat => yo comía
• Conditional: It is similar to future tense, but is used to talk about hypothetical situations and make requests.  (See in "Future tense" section):
  • ex: I would like to go to France => Me gustaría ir a Francia. If it was Imperfect, then it would suffix with -aba for -ar verb i.e I used to like to go to France => Me gustaba ir a Francia. But if it was -er/-ir verb, then there would be no difference b/w Imperfect and conditional.