Poder

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The Spanish verb PODER means ‘to be able to’ or, ‘can’ in English and is a commonly used verb in everyday Spanish, much the same as it is in English. Poder does cause a few problems however as it is a highly irregular verb which is irregular in all tenses with the exception of the imperfect, this includes the tenses of the subjunctive mood and the imperative.

As there is a lot to learn with poder conjugation it is probably best to start with one tense initially and that is why this post will concentrate on conjugating the present tense of poder. There will be future posts covering each of the other irregular tenses and the intention is to interlink all relevant posts…but all in good time.

Poder Conjugation

Conjugation of Poder Present Tense

PODER is one of many vowel changing verbs, in the case of poder in the present tense the o changes to ue in the second and third person singular and the third person plural. Poder has different irregularities in other tenses, which is what makes it particularly difficult to learn, but it is probably best if you just concentrate on this present tense irregularity to start with.

Singular

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That about covers the present tense of poder except to say that the nature of the Spanish verb poder is such that it often functions as an auxiliary verb, meaning that it usually precedes another verb which, in most cases, is the infinitive.

For example: ‘I can go to the cinema’ would translate as ‘Puedo ir al cine’, this is a physical ability, but if you wanted to ask the question ‘Can you drive?’ you would have to use the verb Saber, which means ‘to know’…therefore ‘¿Sabes conducir?’, confusing isn’t it!

Don’t forget to bookmark this post or do a search for any other verbs and tenses you might be having problems with, if you can’t find what you need, post a comment and I’ll do my best to get the relevant information posted!

……..hasta luego

ps The difficulties that many people face learning how to conjugate poder and similarly irregular verbs can be lessened considerably. You should take a few minutes to read my review of the verbarrator verb training software. This specific educational software makes learning Spanish verb conjugation far less of a problem, helping you to learn difficult conjugations much more quickly and with a great deal more enjoyment than using the standard outdated and tedious traditional methods of study…and yes…I do own and use a copy of this software so I’m not endorsing it blindly!

Check out my review of the verbarrator here …or, if you would rather visit the verbarrator site directly you can do so by clicking on the banner below.

Venir

Click Here to learn how to conjugate irregular Spanish verbs quickly and with ease

The Spanish verb VENIR means ‘to come’ in English and is as commonly used in Spanish as it is in English. Venir is a highly irregular Spanish verb which is irregular in the present, preterite, future and conditional tenses and also in all of the subjunctive tenses as well as in the imperative.

For now though we will simply concentrate on how to conjugate venir in the present tense and cover all other tenses in future blog posts that will be posted very soon.

Venir Conjugation

Conjugation of Venir in the Present Tense

VENIR is often referred to as a ‘go’ verb because of the use of go as an ending in the first person singular. Venir is also a vowel changing verb, in this case the e changes to ‘ie’ in the second and third person singular and the third person plural.

Singular

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Please remember to bookmark this page/site and to keep checking back as I will be adding more and more on a regular basis.

Hasta luego

ps. Learning how to conjugate venir can be difficult for many people, as is the case with so many other Spanish irregular verbs. If you are having difficulties you should free up five minutes and check out my review of the verbarrator verb training software. This educational software will not only make learning and memorizing the many different Spanish verb conjugations a great deal easier, it will also help you to do so far quicker than using the outdated and tedious traditional learning methods.

Check out my review of the verbarrator here.

Spanish Verb Conjugation Practice

Click Here to learn how to conjugate irregular Spanish verbs quickly and with ease

It should come as little surprise to you that practice makes perfect when it comes to learning Spanish verb conjugation. However, it can become very tiresome going over each verb conjugation time and time again and this is the reason why so many students decide to call it a day trying to learn Spanish beyond a basic level.

Unfortunately, there has been no other way to master Spanish verbs apart from this way of doing so, as has been the case since people started to learn Spanish…that is until the development and introduction of verb training software programs. The best of these programs is called the Verbarrator and is well worth checking out.

You can do so by clicking on the following link which will take you to a review I’ve written about the program which also contains a video of the program actually being used and a detailed description of the program itself, here’s the link…http://www.irregularspanishverbs.com/verbarratorreview.html …and yes…I do actually have a copy and wouldn’t part with it if you paid me!

Subjunctive Spanish Conjugations

Click Here to learn how to conjugate irregular Spanish verbs quickly and with ease

Learning Subjunctive Spanish Conjugations is no different to learning the conjugations of verbs and tenses in the indicative, the difficulty is in knowing when you should use the subjunctive in Spanish, as it is rarely used by English speakers and is therefore often understood.

Below are tables containing all the regular subjunctive Spanish conjugations for the three different verb groups.

Please note that this post and the information in it deal only with REGULAR verbs, there are many irregular verbs in the subjunctive which are either dealt with in other posts or will be in the not too distant future.

For the following conjugations the regular Spanish verbs hablar (to speak), abrir (to open) and beber (to drink) will be used.

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The Subjunctive Spanish conjugations of the present perfect, pluperfect and future perfect are all formed using the past particple of the verb being conjugated as they are in the indicative.

However, the preceding auxiliary verb haber does change as it uses the subjunctive variants of the same tense instead of the indicative:

‘he’ being the present tense of haber in the indicative and ‘haya’ the present tense of haber in the subjunctive.

A great way to master the Spanish subjunctive and other areas of Spanish verb conjugation is to use a Spanish verb training software program such as the verbarrator, and you can find out more about this wonderful piece of educational software by clicking on the banner below.

Hasta Luego

Preterite vs Imperfect: Which Spanish Past Tense Should You Use?

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When learning past tenses, Preterite vs Imperfect is a question that often causes a few problems for students learning Spanish verbs, and knowing which of these two past tenses to use, and when, can certainly be confusing. However, the following guidelines will provide you with a clear idea as to which tense, preterite or imperfect, should be used.

The Preterite Tense in Spanish

The preterite tense, sometimes referred to as the ”past historic, is used to explain completed actions in the past and will tell you what happened or, what somebody did at a particular time

Examples:

• Conduje el coche – I drove the car
• Cerré la ventana – I closed the window

The Spanish Imperfect Tense

The imperfect tense tells us what was going on, who was doing it or, who used to do it, over an indefinite period of time, with no beginning and no end.

Examples:

• Juan compraba el periódico todos los días – Juan used to buy the newspaper every day.
• El hombre vendía coches – The man was selling cars.

Obviously, getting past the preterite vs imperfect issue is a lot easier when you have tools that will help you learn each tense well, in particular the preterite which has a high number of verbs that are irregular in this tense.

One such tool is called the verbarrator, a recently developed downloadable software program that has had a remarkable impact on how students learn Spanish verbs, helping them to do so much more easily and much more quickly than ever before.

You can check out a review of this software by clicking on this link – Verbarrator Review

For more information on using the preterite and imperfect in Spanish the links below will be of help.

• Spanish Preterite
• Spanish Imperfect Tense Conjugation

Hasta Luego

Spanish Imperfect Tense Conjugation

Click Here to learn how to conjugate irregular Spanish verbs quickly and with ease

The Spanish imperfect tense is probably one of the easier tenses to learn due to the fact that there are only three verbs that are irregular in the imperfect tense and they are ser, ir and ver but before covering how the Spanish imperfect is conjugated lets first look at when we should use this frequently used past tense.

The Spanish imperfect tense refers to an action that happened in the past that is:

1. Indefinite: that is to say it has no definite start or end date.
2. Is a continuous or repeated action
3. Happened over a period of time
4. Began in the past but has continued into the present

Spanish Imperfect Tense Verb Endings

As well as only having three irregular conjugations to learn there are only two sets of endings as -er and -ir verbs both share the same endings. The Spanish imperfect is formed using the stem of the verb and the respective imperfect ending.

Hablar – to speak: Regular Conjugation of an -ar verb in the Spanish Imperfect Tense

Comer – to eat: Regular Conjugation of an -er verb in the Spanish Imperfect Tense

Please note that the same endings are used for verbs ending in -ir.

For more about the irregular verbs in the Spanish Imperfect simply click on the following links:

• Ser Imperfect Tense
• Ir Imperfect Tense
• Ver Imperfect Tense

Hasta Luego

Ver Imperfect Tense: How to Conjugate Ver in the Imperfect Tense

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Ver is one of only three verbs that are irregular in the Spanish imperfect tense, the others being ser and ir. Although irregular, ver imperfect tense doesn’t need too much effort to master as it retains all the endings that other -er verbs use but it’s stem, ‘v’ is extended to include an ‘e’...‘ve’, as shown in the table below.

Ver Imperfect Tense Conjugation

Spanish Preterite: How to Conjugate the Preterite Tense in Spanish

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The Spanish preterite is a past tense consisting of one word, compared with the Perfect which has two, the auxiliary verb and the past participle, here are the essential aspects of the Spanish preterite.

• It is firstly a tense in one word both in Spanish and in English
• It describes a single, completed action in the past: for example, ‘I said‘, ‘Paul spoke‘, ‘we ate‘ and so on.
• What it is important to remember is it can be used in conversation just as well as in the narrative, which is the part outside the dialogue describing past actions.

Here are the endings for the Spanish preterite for each of the three groups of verbs; ar, er and ir.

Hablar – to speak

Comer – to eat

Vivir – to live

The biggest problem with learning the Spanish preterite is the large number of irregular verbs that must be mastered. The most important and most commonly used of these irregular verbs are dar, estar, haber, hacer, poder, poner, querer, saber, tener, venir, ser, ir and decir.

Learning each of the conjugations for each of these verbs is not going to be easy but… a verb training tool, such as the verbarrator, will not only provide you with the best possible help but it will also enable you to learn verb conjugation so much faster than if you were using traditional methods of study.

Take your first step towards mastering Spanish verb conjugation by taking 5 minutes to read this Verbarrator review, and you will then see how you and your studies can benefit greatly from using it.

Other Useful posts about conjugating verbs in the Spanish preterite:

• Dar Preterite Conjugation
• Estar Preterite Conjugation
• How to Conjugate Haber Preterite Tense
• How to Conjugate Hacer in the Preterite Tense
• Conjugating Poder Preterite Tense
• Poner Preterite Tense
• Querer Preterite Tense Conjugation
• Saber Preterite Tense Conjugation
• Tener Preterite: Tener Preterite Conjugation
• Conjugation of Venir Preterite Tense
• How to Conjugate Ser in the Preterite
• The Spanish Verb Ir Preterite Tense Conjugation: Preterito
• How to Conjugate Decir Preterite Tense

Hasta Luego

Danny

How to Conjugate Decir Preterite Tense

Click Here to learn how to conjugate irregular Spanish verbs quickly and with ease

DECIR is an irregular stem changing Spanish verb. The conjugation table below shows Decir preterite conjugation clearly with the stem of Decir, ‘DEC’ changing to ‘DIJ’ in all forms.

Decir Preterite Conjugation

There are many other verbs that are irregular like decir preterite, many of which can be found in the category ‘preterite’ which is linked to beneath this post under the heading: ‘Filed under’

Hasta luego
Danny

Conjugation of Venir Preterite Tense

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VENIR which means ‘to come‘ in Spanish is a highly irregular verb in every tense, with the exception of the imperfect. Venir preterite conjugation is what is known as a stem changing irregular verb as are so many other verbs that are irregular in the preterite. In Venir’s case the stem is ‘VEN’, in the preterite tense however this stem changes to ‘VIN’ and this is shown clearly in the table below.

Venir Preterite Conjugation

There are many other verbs that are irregular in the preterite, many of which can be found in the category ‘preterite’ which is linked to beneath this post after the heading: ‘Filed under’

Hasta luego
Danny