How a Spanish verb is built
Every Spanish verb in the dictionary ends in -ar, -er or -ir. Take that ending off and you have the stem: habl-, com-, viv-. Each tense then adds its own set of six endings, one for each person — yo, tú, él/ella/usted, nosotros, vosotros and ellos/ellas/ustedes. Hablo means I speak, hablamos we speak, hablaron they spoke. Because the ending already tells you who is doing the action, Spanish usually drops the subject pronoun: hablo español is enough.
This means the work of learning verbs comes in two parts. First learn the regular endings for each tense, which cover thousands of verbs. Then learn the exceptions, which are concentrated in the most common verbs — the ones you will use every day. The charts on this page mark every form that does not follow the regular pattern, so you can see exactly where the exceptions are and ignore everything else.
The five tenses in the charts
The present (hablo) covers what happens now, what happens regularly and, very often, the near future: mañana salgo a las seis. The preterite (hablé) reports a finished event at a definite point in the past. The imperfect (hablaba) describes the background: what used to happen, what was going on, how things were. The future (hablaré) is built on the whole infinitive and is also used for guesses: serán las diez, it must be about ten.
The present subjunctive (hable) is not a time but a mood. It appears after expressions of wishing, doubting, feeling or requesting when the subject changes: quiero que vengas (I want you to come), espero que tengas suerte. It is formed from the yo form of the present: drop the -o and switch the vowel, so -ar verbs take -e endings and -er/-ir verbs take -a endings. That is why tengo gives tenga and conozco gives conozca.
Preterite or imperfect?
This is the past-tense choice learners find hardest, and a simple picture helps. Imagine a film: the imperfect is the scenery and the ongoing action, the preterite is what suddenly happens in it. Llovía y yo leía cuando sonó el teléfono — it was raining and I was reading (imperfect, background) when the phone rang (preterite, event). Signal words help too: ayer, el lunes, en 2019 and de repente point to the preterite; siempre, cada día, de niño and mientras point to the imperfect.
The imperfect is also the friendliest tense to learn: only three verbs are irregular in it — ser (era), ir (iba) and ver (veía). The preterite is the opposite, with a whole family of irregular stems. Open any verb in the charts and compare the two columns to see the difference.
Stem-changing verbs and the “boot”
In many common verbs the last vowel of the stem changes when it is stressed: e → ie (pensar → pienso), o → ue (volver → vuelvo), e → i (pedir → pido), and once u → ue (jugar → juego). The change happens in the present in yo, tú, él and ellos, but not in nosotros and vosotros, where the stress falls on the ending. Write the six forms in two columns and the changed ones make the shape of a boot — the classic way teachers draw it.
The -ir stem-changers have one more habit. In the preterite their third-person forms change too, e → i or o → u: sintió, pidió, durmió, murieron. The same small change appears in the nosotros and vosotros forms of the subjunctive: sintamos, durmamos, pidáis. The -ar and -er stem-changers never do this, which is why pensó and volvió look completely regular.
Spelling changes that keep the sound
Some verbs look irregular on paper but are perfectly regular in speech. Spanish spelling ties certain letters to certain sounds, so when an ending starting with e is added, the consonant before it has to be respelled: c → qu (buscar → busqué, busque), g → gu (llegar → llegué, llegue) and z → c (cruzar → crucé, cruce). This affects only the yo form of the preterite and the whole present subjunctive.
A second group changes i → y between vowels: leer → leyó, leyeron, creer → creyó, caer → cayó, oír → oyó. Their other preterite forms carry a written accent on the í (leíste, leímos) so that the two vowels are pronounced separately. The charts highlight these forms too, because a learner who writes them from the regular pattern gets them wrong.
The truly irregular verbs
A short list of verbs — ser, estar, ir, haber, tener, hacer, poder, decir, ver, dar, saber, querer, poner, venir, salir — does most of the work in everyday Spanish, and almost all of them are irregular. The good news is that their irregularities follow patterns. Many have a strong preterite with a new stem and unstressed endings without accents: tuve, estuve, pude, puse, supe, quise, vine, hice, dije. Ser and ir even share the same preterite, fui, fuiste, fue; the context tells you which one is meant.
Others have a special yo form in the present — tengo, hago, pongo, salgo, vengo, digo, conozco, traigo — and because the subjunctive is built on that form, the irregularity carries straight over: tenga, haga, ponga, salga. A dozen verbs shorten their stem in the future: tendré, podré, saldré, vendré, haré, diré, querré, sabré. Learn these as groups rather than one by one and the list becomes far less intimidating.
Two famous pairs: ser and estar, por and para
English has one verb to be; Spanish has two. As a rule of thumb, ser says what something is — identity, origin, job, defining traits, time and dates, where an event takes place — while estar says where something is and what condition it is in at the moment. The rule has well-known edges: an event uses ser for its location (la fiesta es en mi casa), and some adjectives change meaning with the verb (ser listo is to be clever, estar listo is to be ready).
Por and para both translate as for, but they look in opposite directions. Para points forward to a goal: a purpose, a recipient, a destination, a deadline. Por looks back at a cause or describes the way through: a reason, a route, a means, an exchange, a stretch of time. The third tab gives 75 sentences on these two pairs, and after every answer it shows the rule that decides it.
A practice routine that works
Start with the 30 most common verbs and one tense at a time, using multiple choice. The wrong options are chosen to be tempting — the regular form a learner would guess, the same person in another tense, or another person in the same tense — so a correct answer means you really know the form. Once you score 9 or 10 out of 10, switch to typing, which forces you to produce the word rather than recognise it. That is the step that makes verbs come out when you speak.
Two settings depend on the Spanish you are learning. If it is Latin American Spanish, untick vosotros: it disappears from the charts and the quiz, since ustedes is used for every plural “you” there. And keep accents strict unless your keyboard makes them hard to type — hablo and habló, esté and este are different words. The buttons under the answer box add á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ and ü with one tap.