Verb Conjugation

[jmg999]

Hi,

I'm taking a beginning Spanish course, and I'm having a really difficult time conjugating verbs properly. My problem arises, when there is no person specified. If someone is specified, that's easy enough. For instance:

yo tengo
tú tienes
él tiene
nosotros tenemos
ellos tienen

This is easy enough. And, if I'm not familiar w/ the verb, I can certainly look it up. There are plenty of verb conjugators online.

The problem I'm having is in sentences such as these:

The baseball game was really exciting.
The building fell over.
That car is really fast.

In sentences such as there, where no one is specified, is there a rule for remembering how to conjugate verbs? I have no idea how to do this, and I'm falling behind in my class b/c of it. I don't have any problems remembering vocabulary, but this is killing me. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.


Jeff

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

The baseball game, the building and the car are perfectly specific subjects.
And the verb conjugation in Spanish is the same as it is in English, the third person singular: he/she/it = él/ella

The baseball game was really exciting = el juego de béisbol estuvo muy interesante.
The building fell over = el edificio se cayó
That car is really fast = ese auto es muy veloz

[Luna Azul]

If I understand you well, you're saying that when the sentence doesn't have a pronoun (yo, tú, él...) it's difficult for you to know the conjugation.

The sentences you wrote do have a subject (baseball, building, car).. all you have to do is replace those words with their corresponding pronoun.

In this case, the pronoun in English is "it". Spanish doesn't have a pronoun that specifically means "it" but it uses the same pronoun that refers to people: "él" when referring to a masculine noun and "ella" when referring to a feminine noun.

The conjugation in those cases is always the third person singular.

"the car is really fast" = "el carro es realmente rápido" = "él es realmente rápido".

The problem here, is that 99% of the time, the pronoun "él" is not used, we say the sentence without a pronoun: "es realmente rápido".

And that applies also to pronouns that refer to people:

"Mary is very pretty" = "María es muy bonita"
"She is very pretty" = "ella es muy bonita" = "es muy bonita" (no pronoun")

In order to know who the sentence is referring to you need to know the conjugations. It's the only way. You need to study your verbs, there will be a moment when you'll be able to recognize the conjugations because they're more or less similar for every verb and have similar and very recognizable endings. The only verbs you'll have real trouble with are the irregular verbs. Those conjugations you'll have to learn by heart.

Don't dispair, you'll get familiarized with the conjugations.. they are like repeating a song over and over. You'll end up learning the lyrics and the music.

[jmg999]

Thank you very much for your timely, yet in-depth reply. This helps it explain the rules behind conjugation much more clearly. One other question I forgot to mention in my opening post...how come an unconjugated verb is sometimes used? I see it written sometimes, but I don't understand it. For instance, hacer might be used in a sentence, or escribir might be used. What would make it so that you wouldn't need to conjugate it in this case? I'm sorry, I wish I had an example, but I can't find one right now.

[Luna Azul]

Originally Posted by jmg999

One other question I forgot to mention in my opening post...how come an unconjugated verb is sometimes used? I see it written sometimes, but I don't understand it. For instance, hacer might be used in a sentence, or escribir might be used. What would make it so that you wouldn't need to conjugate it in this case? I'm sorry, I wish I had an example, but I can't find one right now.

You mean when are verbs used in the infinitive?. The infinitives are recognized because they all end in either -ar, -er, or -ir.

The easiest answer to that is, infinitives are used in a sentence that already has a verb that's conjugated: "queremos cantar" = "we want to sing"

"queremos" is conjugated in the first person plural of the verb "querer" (to want).

Some verbs require a preposition between the two verbs: "(ellos) vienen a cenar".

In most cases when the verb in English is used with "to" before the verb, the verb in Spanish is in the infinitive..

"they come to talk" = "ellos vienen a conversar"

The English gerund is translated to the Spanish infinitive: "Sleeping is necessary" = "Dormir es necesario".

Pay attention to this sentence: "Walking is good to lose weight". Here we have both the cases that I explained to you. The translation to that sentence in English is "Caminar es bueno para perder peso".

"Caminar" is the subject of the verb ""es", as "walking" (gerund) is the subject of the verb "is". Since "es" is conjugated, "perder" is used in the infinitive and, if you notice, it is "to lose" in English.

This is a basic explanation. Grammar is pretty complicated and many times you'll have a lot of questions. But I think this is more or less what you wanted to know.

Saludos

L.A.

[jmg999]

Thank you very much, Luna. That was very helpful. Our instructor explained it in a way that said, if there are two verbs in a sentence, the first verb is conjugated, but the second isn't. I thought I had seen a sentence the other day, where there was only one verb, and it wasn't conjugated, but I couldn't find it. I'll keep an eye out for an instance of this, and if I see it, I'll post it here. Thank you, again!