Day 8 of 90
Saying what you do
Until now you have learned whole phrases. Today you get a machine: six endings that convert roughly half the verbs in Spanish into anything you want to say about the present.
The six endings
hablar, to speak. Take off the -ar and add these.
These same five endings work on hundreds of verbs, so learning them once buys you trabajar to work, estudiar to study, cocinar to cook, viajar to travel, escuchar to listen, and every other verb whose dictionary form ends in -ar. This is the highest return ten minutes in the whole course, which is why it sits on day eight rather than day forty.
Verbs worth having today
Five -ar verbs that come up constantly.
Notice that necesito ayuda is two words where English needs three, because Spanish does not put an article in front of ayuda here. The endings carry the subject and the language drops whatever it can. That habit of saying less is worth adopting early, because sentences translated word for word from English are the main thing that marks a beginner.
Negatives and questions
Both are easier than in English.
English needs do and does to build a question or a negative, and Spanish needs neither. no goes in front of the verb and a question is just a statement asked upward. That means every verb you learn arrives fully usable in all three shapes at once, with nothing extra to memorise.
hablo covers I speak, I am speaking and I do speak. Spanish does have a separate form, estoy hablando, but it is used far more narrowly than the English continuous, essentially only for something happening at this exact moment. If you reach for it every time English would, you will sound odd. Use the plain present as your default.
Carry these forward
Four lines from today that later days assume you know.
Check yourself
Eight questions. Finishing them marks the day done.
Question 1 of 8
Type I work, from trabajar.
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