Does Spanish community conjugate in all tenses?
 

I'll try and clarify my question. I was wondering if the typical Spanish speaking person in the U.S. conjugates each verb as the books demonstrate, including conjugating them for all the different tenses. Reading through my "verb" book is rather intimidating to say the least. I'm kind of hoping that memorizing the whole thing isn't necessary in order to speak like the typical Spanish speaking person in Texas. Thanks in advance, Chris

Yes, all verbs get conjugated in all tenses, although some tenses are used less than others. (The literary imperfect subjunctive e. g. caminase, isn't used much in everyday speech). But it doesn't have to be that intimidating.

Take the verb to run. You know you say I run and she runs. You add an s to the verb for the third person singular. But you don't have to memorize that s for every single verb out there. You memorize the pattern, so that you know that whenever you want to talk about he, she or it, you're going to add an s. (for regular verbs.). Now in Spanish, there are more patterns to memorize, but they are limited.

camino - I walk
caminas - you walk
camina - he walks, she walks, you(formal) walk, it walks
caminamos - we walk
caminan - you(plural) walk, they walk.

The endings are vitally important, since the pronouns (you, I, he, she, we etc) aren't required. The endings are the only way you can know who is being discussed. The -amos on the end of a verb signifies we.

Does Spanish community conjugate
 

Hi Chris!

You may also want to focus on one tense at a time. I began by learning the present tense and those come naturally to me now.

My next task is focuing on past and present tense and ~ whoa baby! So I started with one tense - future - and discovered it too has a pattern. In most cases, you take the full word for the verb and add the following extensions:

Bailar
bailaré - I will dance
bailarás - You will dance
bailará - He/She/You (formal) will dance
bailaramos - We will dance
bailarán - They/You (Plural) will dance

David's right. It doesn't seem as overwhelming when I break it down like that rather than trying to memorize them all. I hope that helps.

Brenda, I'm following your lead (or maybe David's lead now that I read your above sentence closer) by learning one tense at a time. Like you, I started with the present, then went to the future tense. Anyway, I'm a lot more motivated now. I'm also finally getting a clue as to how to use words like se, me, lo, etc., which is a bit of a relief. Thanks, Chris

Chris, if you've been studying the present and the future, after you get those down pretty well, I'd recommend the simple past as your third tense to study. It will be very useful for conversing.

Conjugating
 

What is the simple past? I have not been focusing on that one. I pretty much started with the present, and have been following the conjugation outline on this website (1 through 4) thinking they might be listed in order of common usage.

Just a reminder that I don't get the "subjunctive" stuff. I need real examples like the ones you guys provided below.

Maybe continue with the "bailar" example?

Bailad it's an order, like Disparad! (Shoot!)
Yo bailo Tango. I dance Tango (I can dance Tango)
Yo bailaré mañana. I will dance tomorrow.
Yo bailé ayer. I danced yesterday.
Yo bailaba de joven. I danced when I was young
Yo bailaría si no fuese tan torpe. I danced if I were not so clumsy
Baile: dance

Thanks!

Yes, the first four conjugations on this site are present, imperfect, perterit, and future. And I think that is a pretty good order for learning them.

present - yo bailo
imperfect - yo bailaba (I was dancing, used to dance)
preterit - yo bailé (I danced)
future - yo bailaré

The imperfect is pretty easy. There are only one or two irregular verbs in the imperfect. The preterit has some irregulars. The future is also surprisingly easy, there are about 8 or 10 irregular stems, other than that, you just put the endings on the infinitive form of the verb.

From my understanding, the conditional translation above could also be, "I would dance if I were not so clumsy".

It seems "would" is a very common English word in the conditional, as is "was" and "used to" in the imperfect, and "will" in the future tense. I would describe the preterit in English as more "ed" verb endings such as "danced", as well as words such as "spoke" and "rode".

I'm sure I'm being too general with the characterizations, but I'm just trying to get the basic idea for now.

Does Spanish...
 

OK, but what do you mean by the simple past? Can you provide an example? Or did you and I missed it?

Thanks!

The simple past would be: I danced. yo bailé.