Present tense: verb patterns and high-frequency verbs
Green takes over. Three regular patterns and seven irregular workhorses.
Colours live this week
10 of 10 in playA thing, a person or a place.
An action or a state — what is happening.
Describes a noun.
Modifies a verb or an adjective.
the / a / some — and possessives like mon, ma.
Stands in for a noun — I, you, he, it.
Links words together — to, in, of, for.
Joins two parts of a sentence.
Opens a question — where, when, how, why.
Learn it whole. Do not take it apart.
The full palette has been live since Week 4. From here on nothing new is introduced — you simply use all nine.
What to produce, and what only to recognise
The forms to produce are yo, usted, él/ella and nosotros. Tú and vosotros are recognition-only for now — know them when you hear them, do not drill them. And note that Spanish usually drops the pronoun altogether: hablo already means I speak, so yo hablo is only used for emphasis. Blue appears far less often here than in French.
The three regular patterns
One model verb per group, and hundreds of Spanish verbs follow the same endings. Note that -er and -ir differ only in the nosotros and vosotros forms.
| Verb | yoreviewed | tú | él / ella / usted | nosotros | vosotros | ellos / ellas |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hablarto speak (-ar group) | hablo | hablas | habla | hablamos | habláis | hablan |
| comerto eat (-er group) | como | comes | come | comemos | coméis | comen |
| vivirto live (-ir group) | vivo | vives | vive | vivimos | vivís | viven |
Only the yo column becomes a review card. The rest are there to be recognised, not produced — which is what keeps a day inside its fifteen minutes.
Seven irregular verbs worth more than any others
These do not follow a pattern, and it does not matter — they turn up so often that repetition does the work.
| Verb | yoreviewed | tú | él / ella / usted | nosotros |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| serto be (permanently) | soy | eres | es | somos |
| estarto be (right now) | estoy | estás | está | estamos |
| tenerto have | tengo | tienes | tiene | tenemos |
| irto go | voy | vas | va | vamos |
| hacerto do or make | hago | haces | hace | hacemos |
| podercan, to be able | puedo | puedes | puede | podemos |
| quererto want | quiero | quieres | quiere | queremos |
Only the yo column becomes a review card. The rest are there to be recognised, not produced — which is what keeps a day inside its fifteen minutes.
Ser and estar — the one that catches everyone
Spanish has two verbs for to be. Ser is for what something fundamentally is: soy inglés, soy jubilado if you think of it as an identity. Estar is for how something is right now, and for where it is: estoy cansado, estoy en casa, ¿dónde está la cocina? A useful rule of thumb for this course — if you could reasonably say it differently tomorrow, use estar.
Chunks built from those verbs
- [soy]I am (permanently)
- [estoy]I am (right now)
- [tengo]I have
- [voy a]I'm going to
- [puede]you can / he can
- [hay]there is / there are
One word covering both. Never changes.
Sentence frames
- 1
Hablo un poco de español.
I speak a little Spanish.
The single most useful sentence you will learn all year.
- 2
¿Puede repetir, [por favor]?
Can you repeat, please?
- 3
Vamos al café.
We're going to the café.
al = a + el, the only contraction Spanish has apart from del.
Daily mini-tasks
Listening this week
Coffee Break Spanish — the verb episodes
Season 1
Clear conjugation drills. Ideal for shadowing at 0.75× speed.