Day 12 of 90

The other two verb families

Regular -er and -ir verbs. About 11 minutes. Grammar: the -er and -ir endings.

On day eight you got the -ar endings and roughly half the verbs in the language. Today you get the other two families, and with them almost every regular verb that exists.

-er verbs

comer, to eat. Drop the -er and add these.

como, comes, comeI eat, you eat, he or she eatsCompare with hablo, hablas, habla. Same shape, e instead of a.

comemoswe eat

comenthey eat, and you plural eatCovers ustedes in Latin America.In Spain: coméis for vosotros

beber, aprender, leer, correrto drink, to learn, to read, to runAll take the same endings.

Why it works this way

The only vowel that changed from the -ar family is the one in the ending. hablas becomes comes, hablamos becomes comemos. So you are not learning a second system, you are learning that one letter swaps. That is why the three families are usually taught as one lesson and not three.

-ir verbs

vivir, to live. Almost identical to -er.

vivo, vives, viveI live, you live, he or she livesExactly the same as the -er endings.

vivimoswe liveThe one form that differs. comemos against vivimos.

viventhey live, and you plural liveIn Spain: vivís for vosotros

escribir, abrir, subir, decidirto write, to open, to go up, to decide

Why it works this way

In the present tense the -er and -ir families differ in exactly one form out of five, the we form. That is the whole distinction, so it is not worth treating them as separate things to memorise. They part company properly in other tenses, which is why the language still keeps them apart.

Putting the three together

One sentence pattern, three families.

hablo, como, vivoI speak, I eat, I liveThe I form is o for all three. No exceptions among regular verbs.

hablamos, comemos, vivimoswe speak, we eat, we liveThe we form is the only place all three differ.

¿dónde vives?where do you live?One of the first questions anyone will ask you.

aprendo españolI am learning SpanishThe plain present, not a continuous form. From day 8.

Why it works this way

The I form ends in o for every regular verb in the language, and the they form ends in n. Between them those two facts identify who is speaking in most sentences you will hear, even when you miss the rest of the word. Listening for the last letter is a real technique and it works from today.

The irregulars are the common ones

You may notice that ser, estar, tener, ir, hacer and poder do not follow any of this. That is not bad luck. The verbs a language uses most are the ones that resist regularisation, in Spanish exactly as in English with be, go and have. So the irregular verbs and the useful verbs are largely the same list, which is why they were taught first.

Carry these forward

Four lines from today that later days assume you know.

comoI eat

vivimoswe live

¿dónde vives?where do you live?

aprendo españolI am learning Spanish

Check yourself

Eight questions. Finishing them marks the day done.

Question 1 of 8

Type we eat, from comer.

Every Spanish item on this site is waiting on a native speaker review before launch. If something here is wrong, tell us and it gets corrected.