Present perfect tense in Spanish

Present perfect tense is formed in Spanish by using the past participle of the verb and the auxiliary verb “haber” conjugated in the present perfect tense.

The formation of the past participle: As usual in Spanish, verbs are grouped as –ar, -er and ir verbs when forming the past participle. The past participles of regular –ar verbs are formed by adding “-ado” to the stem of the verb. For example;

trabajar (to work) ->trabajado (worked) comprar (to buy) -> comprador (bought) hablar (to speak)-> hablado (spoken)

The past participle of regular

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Spanish articles and the plural forms for natural gender

As you know, in Spanish every noun has an article. The article of a noun does not necesarily have to do with the gender of a person; even if it is a pencil it will have an article.

Of course, the nouns which are used for humans have articles as well. For instance (la) madre is mother and (el) padre is father. Because mother indicates a female person, its article is the feminine “la” and similarly the article for the father is the masculine “el”.

Many feminine nouns end in “a” in Spanish and

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3 tips to better cope with ser and estar

If you have come to this place, that means you have already noticed the importance of ser and estar. You have also understood that sometimes it is not that easy to decide which one to use.

Both verbs can be translated as “to be” to English as you know. And that is exactly the reason why we get into so much trouble with them. The point is we should stop trying to translate. Instead, we should learn the situations when to use ser and when to use estar.

That’s why in this article, I

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How to conjugate Spanish reflexive verbs in present tense

A reflexive verb in Spanish has “se” attached to its infinitive. For example:

levantarse (to get up) afeitarse (to shave) llamarse (be called)

are examples of reflexive verbs. Their structures indicate how a reflexive verb looks like in Spanish:

stem of the verb + infinitive ending + se

For example, let us take the verb levantarse, the stem of this verb is “levant”, the infinitive ending is “ar” and as all other reflexive verbs, “se” is attached to the infinitive.

se is called reflexive pronoun. To conjugate a reflexive verb in present you need to change the pronoun “se”  in

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How to conjugate Spanish verbs in present tense

In Spanish there are three possibilities for the infinitive endings of the verbs:

Spanish verbs ending in -ar. Examples: jugar, cocinar, cantar Spanish verbs ending in -er. Examples: leer, ver, ser, tener Spanish verbs ending in -ir.  Examples: escribir, ir, salir, vivir

When you look up a verb in a dictionary, you always see the infinitive of a verb and as stated above a verb can end in -ar, -er or -ir.

It is important to get used to this classification just from the beginning because most of the rules to be applied depend on the understanding of this grouping, like the one which is

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