2000+ Spanish Irregular Verbs - Hackvalue

3. When is the action (verb) taking place?
a. What is tense?
The timing of an action is indicated by changes to the verb, these changes are traditionally referred to
as a tense.
Generally the three time periods one must associate themselves with are:
Present = He works hard.
Past = He worked hard.
Future = He will work hard.
In most languages a different ending is added to the stem of the verb to convey a sense of time, in the
example above an –s was added to the third person singular to convey the present tense, and –ed
was added to convey the past tense, the future tense used an auxiliary verb. In Spanish the endings
change much more frequently and the use of auxiliary verbs is common within the past tenses.
b. Auxiliary verbs
Auxiliary verbs are used to support the main verb, will is used in the above example to convey an
event yet to happen ie; future tense.
In English, to be, to have and to do are the most important auxiliary verbs, in Spanish hacer (to do, to
make) is not used for asking questions or negating statements but haber (to have) is used to form
compound tenses.
c. Simple and compound tenses
Tenses formed by adding endings to the verb stem are called simple tenses.
Tenses formed by using an auxiliary verb are called compound tenses.
d. Participles
A compound tense is formed using an auxiliary verb and a form of the main verb called a participle.
The past participle is used to form the perfect tense amongst other in both English and Spanish:
he enviado I have sent
he comido I have eaten
he dormido I have slept
In Spanish the present participle or Gerund is used to form the present and past continuous tenses.
estoy corriendo I am running
iba corriendo I was running
The gerund is also used in the construction of sentences.
le vi trabajando I saw him working.
siguieron andando They went on walking
2000+ Spanish Irregular Verbs - 2nd Edition
6
© Copywright 2007