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For other irregular verbs and their common patterns, see the article on Spanish irregular verbs. The tables include only the "simple" tenses (that is, those formed with a single word), and not the "compound" tenses (those formed with an auxiliary verb plus a non-finite form of the main verb), such as the progressive, perfect, and passive voice.
Every Spanish verb belongs to one of three form classes, characterized by the infinitive ending: -ar, -er, or -ir—sometimes called the first, second, and third conjugations, respectively. A Spanish verb has nine indicative tenses with more-or-less direct English equivalents: the present tense ('I walk'), the preterite ('I walked'), the ...
Virtually all verbs of the third conjugation (-ir), if they have an -e-or -o-as the last vowel of their stem, undergo a vowel-raising change whereby e changes to i and o changes to u, in some of their forms (for details, see Spanish irregular verbs). Examples include pedir ("to ask for"; e.g., pide ["he/she asks for"]), competir ("to compete ...
A verb in this mood is always distinguishable from its indicative counterpart by their different conjugation. The Spanish subjunctive mood descended from Latin, but is morphologically far simpler, having lost many of Latin's forms. Some of the subjunctive forms do not exist in Latin, such as the future, whose usage in modern-day Spanish ...
Spanish is a pro-drop language with respect to subject pronouns, and, like many European languages, Spanish makes a T-V distinction in second person pronouns that has no equivalent in modern English. Object pronouns can be both clitic and non-clitic, with non-clitic forms carrying greater emphasis.
Vowel raising appears only in verbs of the third conjugation (-ir verbs), and in this group it affects dormir, morir, podrir (alternative of the more common pudrir) and nearly all verbs which have -e-as their last stem vowel (e.g. sentir, repetir); exceptions include cernir, discernir and concernir (all three diphthongizing, e-ie).
While English has a relatively simple conjugation, other languages such as French and Arabic or Spanish are more complex, with each verb having dozens of conjugated forms. Some languages such as Georgian and Basque have highly complex conjugation systems with hundreds of possible conjugations for every verb.
I find a general trend in the article to assimilate Spanish verb conjugation to English verb conjugation. I personally think it's OK, as long as you don't introduce errors in order to avoid a long explanation. We can end up with a very clear but perfectly mistaken article. For instance, in Spanish "continuous tenses" as such do not exist.