Regular Verbs in the Present Tense
Regular verbs follow predictable patterns. The pattern that a verb follows depends on the last two letters of the infinitive form of the verb. Verbs that end in –ar are the most common and most predictable, so they are presented first. To conjugate an –ar verb follow these two steps:
1.Remove the – ar ending from the infinitive. What is left is called the base of the verb.
2.Using the regular endings shown in Table 1, you would place the base of the verb in front of those endings.
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The verb hablar (to speak) is a regular – ar verb, so it will serve as a good illustration of creating a conjugation chart using the steps above. First, remove the – ar ending, and what's left is the base habl–. When you put the base together with ending – o for yo, for example, you have the conjugated verb form hablo.
Table 2 shows the conjugation chart for the verb hablar in the present tense.
Verbs ending in – er are the second most common type of verb. To conjugate a regular – er verb, you use the same two‐step process as you did with – ar verbs, but the endings are different for – er verbs. The patterns of – er verbs are very similar to – ir verbs, which will make it easy to learn their endings. So if you want to conjugate a regular – er verb, simply remove the –er ending from the infinitive and place the base of the verb in front of the endings presented in Table 3.
Now, take a look at Table 4 for the conjugated form of the verb comer (to eat).
Verbs of the third type are called – ir verbs. In the present tense a verb ending in – ir will be conjugated the same as an – er verb in all forms except for two. As illustrated in Table 5, the endings used for the nosotros/nosotras (the first person plural) and vosotros/vosotras (the second person plural) forms of the verb are different for – ir verbs.
Escribir (to write) was one of the – ir verbs presented earlier as an infinitive. The forms of the verb escribir in Table 6 will serve as an example for any regular – ir verb.
