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Spanish verbs are a complex area of Spanish grammar, with many combinations of tenses, aspects and moods (up to fifty conjugated forms per verb).Although conjugation rules are relatively straightforward, a large number of verbs are irregular.
The verbs haber and tener are easily distinguished, but they may pose a problem for learners of Spanish who speak other Romance languages (where the cognates of haber and tener are used differently), for English speakers (where "have" is used as a verb and as an auxiliary), and others. Haber derives from Latin habeō, with the basic meaning of ...
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.
The preterite or preterit (/ ˈ p r ɛ t ər ɪ t / PRET-ər-it; abbreviated PRET or PRT) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple past tense.
The preterite and past participle forms of irregular verbs follow certain patterns. These include ending in -t (e.g. build , bend , send ), stem changes (whether it is a vowel, such as in sit , win or hold , or a consonant, such as in teach and seek , that changes), or adding the [ n ] suffix to the past participle form (e.g. drive , show , rise ).
Today, the two forms of the imperfect subjunctive – for example, "hubiese" and "hubiera", from "haber" – are largely interchangeable.* The -se form derives (as in most Romance languages) from the Latin pluperfect subjunctive, while the -ra form derives from the Latin pluperfect indicative. The use of one or the other is largely a matter of ...
In the Río de la Plata region, both the tú-conjugation and the voseo conjugation are found, the tú-form being more common. In this variety, some studies have shown a pragmatic difference between the tú -form and the vos -form, such that the vos form carries information about the speaker's belief state, and can be stigmatized.
The English language has many irregular verbs, approaching 200 in normal use – and significantly more if prefixed forms are counted. In most cases, the irregularity concerns the past tense (also called preterite) or the past participle.