Regular Verbs in Spanish

Introduction

Verbs that follow certain rules and whose forms are therefore predictable, are called ‘regular verbs’

  • Once you have learnt the pattern of regular verbs you can confidently use any regular verbs in the same way.

There are three categories of regular verbs in Spanish: -ar, -er, and -ir verbs.

  • The -ar, -er and -ir refer to the endings of these verbs in their infintive form, i.e. the form that you will find in the dictionary as the basis of the verb and which can be translated as ‘to...’, e.g. trabajar means ‘to work’.

There is a set of endings that correspond to each of these three types of verbs, and the endings correspond to the three ‘persons’ explained in the notes on subject pronouns

-AR Verbs in the Present Tense: singular

The -ar group is by far the largest group of verbs and nearly all the verbs in this group are regular

Here is the present tense of the regular -ar verb trabajar in the singular:

Spanish English
(yo) trabajo I work
(tú) trabajas you work (to one person, familiar)
(él) trabaja
(ella) trabaja
(Vd.) trabaja
he works
she works
you work (to one person, formal)

Notice that the endings are distinctive for ‘I’ and the familiar ‘you’, so there is really no need to include the subject pronouns 'yo' and 'tu', unless you want to add emphasis:

  • E.g. I work, but you do not work = Yo trabajo pero no trabajas

‘He’, ‘she’ and the polite ‘you’ all use the same form. So if there is any possible ambiguity, you may need to include the subject pronoun.

  • Vd. trabaja en el banco ¿no? = You work in the bank, don’t you?

Next...

Now you know the subject pronouns, why not dive straight into regular Spanish verbs here