The Infinitive Verb Form

Verbs are action words. There are only three types of verbs in Spanish. We call them:

• ar verbs
• er verbs
• ir verbs

The most basic form of a verb is called an infinitive. We categorize Spanish verbs based on the last two letters of their infinitive form.

caminar (to walk) --> caminar --> ar verb

correr (to run) --> correr --> er verb

escribir (to write) --> escribir --> ir verb

Verbs in Spanish can be broken down into three parts. The first part tells us what the action is that is taking place. The last part must match the subject, that is, it tells us who is doing it.

The middle part tells us other kinds of information. The first thing that you must understand is that there are actually two basic patterns that verbs follow in Spanish. You probably remember that we had two categories of nouns. They are the "O" category and the "A" category. Well, we can see from the following examples that there are two categories of verbs.

• HABLAMOS
• COMEMOS

In the first verb (which means "we are speaking" or "we speak"), the first part is "habl". That is the part which tells us the kind of action that is taking place, "speaking". The "mos" on the end is the part which we use when we say that WE are doing something. Anytime that the sentence says WE do something, the verb will end with "mos". Between the "habl" and the "mos" we can see the letter "a". That is because "speak" is an "A" category verb in Spanish.

Now look at the second verb, "comemos". The first part, "com", tells us that the action that we are talking about is "eating". Once again, to know WHO is eating we must look at the end of the verb, and we see "mos". That means that WE are eating. In this case, however, the letter between the first part of the verb (some books call this the "stem" of the verb which identifies the action and the "mos" which says that WE are doing it, we find the letter "e". That is because "eat" is an "E" category verb. These are the two main categories of verbs in Spanish, "A" and "E".

Now let's take a look at some more forms. If we want to say that THEY are doing something, we place an "n" on the end of the verb. To say, "they are speaking" we would take off the "mos" and replace it with "n". That means that "they speak" would be:

HABLAN

To say "they are eating" you must take away the "mos" which means WE and replace it with "n" which means THEY. The proper form would then be:

COMEN

If you remember, the word for "you" when you are talking with a friend (anybody that you could call by their first name) is "tu". The proper verb ending to say that YOU are doing something is "s". Don't get confused. In English, "s" means HE or SHE is doing something. Look at the examples:

I work
you work
he (she) works
we work
they work

The letter "s" doesn't mean the same thing in Spanish as in English. In Spanish we place an "s" at the end of the verb when we say YOU are doing something. In order to say, "you are speaking" or "you speak" we would say, "hablas". How would you say, "you are eating" or "you eat"? First we would take off what comes after the "e", and then we would add "s" on the end. The proper form would be "comes".

If we want to say that HE or SHE is doing something in Spanish, we leave a blank space at the end. By this I mean that after the "a" or the "e", depending on which category the verb belongs to, we just leave it empty. Nothing goes in the space. The proper form for "he speaks" would be, "habla". We can break it down this way.

HABL-A-.......

Can you figure out how to say "he is eating"? First we would have the STEM for "eat" which is "com". Next we would have the "e" since the verb "eat" is an "E" category verb. After that we would just have a blank space because an empty space is used to match HE or SHE.

In the case of "I am doing something" we have something different happening. In the third spot we find the letter "o".