What is tense in spanish

The simplest tenses are past tense ex: I went , present tense ex: I go and future tense ex: I will go. Each tense is identified by "conjugating" the verb, which essentially means changing the verb form to tell us who is performing the action, when the action is being performed, and the relationship between the verb and other parts of the sentence.

The idea is the same in Spanish as in English, but verb conjugations are one of the trickier bits of Spanish grammar. Learn more about the simple verb tenses and how to conjugate them by clicking on the pages below:.

Put in the hard work, concentrate on this lesson and you might just be surprised and how much you can learn on one single page. This post is an overview of everything you need to know about the Spanish tenses and their conjugations, from the most basic to the most advanced.

Something you really need to master if you want to someday be a proficient Spanish speaker. They are the building blocks you need to construct full sentences in any situation.

Present Spanish tenses will be used when you talk about current events, things that are happening now, or when you explain what you think or like. The Spanish present simple tense is generally formed when you want to talk about a habit or something that happens in general.

The present tense is formed by changing the endings of the verb, which will be different depending if the verb ends in -ar, -er, or -ir. The past tense is used when you want to talk about events that happened any time before the present moment, whether that be years ago, 5 months ago, yesterday, or 2 minutes ago.

However, while in English we get by with only one, in Spanish there are two tenses which are used to express the past, and they have very different uses. The past preterite is used when you want to talk about specific events that happened at a certain time in the past. Like the present tense, the past preterite is formed by changing the endings of the verb, which will be different depending if the verb ends in -ar, -er, or -ir. In the imperfect tense, the regular -er and -ir endings are exactly the same, so there are only two distinctions.

Note: In the past imperfect tense, it is customary to add the subject before the verb when talking in first and third person. The future tense is used to talk about events that will happen any time after the present moment. There are two ways to form this in Spanish, which is similar to how we talk about the future in English.

The future inflection is similar to using the world will in English. Instead of changing the endings of the verbs, the future tense takes the whole verb and adds to the end of it. This is therefore a lot easier to remember as there is only one conjugation for all types of verbs.

Only in Spanish, instead of having a separate word to express this as we do in English , this is shown by adding an inflection to the end of the verb, very similar to the future tense. All the previous formations mentioned are in indicative mood, which is named as such because it is indicative of reality. The subjunctive, sometimes referred to as irrealis mood, is used when we talk about something which is uncertain, unknown, or something which is imposed on by something else.

By far the most common form of subjunctive, the Spanish present subjunctive expresses the idea of uncertainty or unknown-ness in all present or future situations. Here are some examples. These are just the instances I could think of off the top of my head, but there are many more scenarios in which the present subjunctive could be used, so keep that in mind and do some more research if you really want to master the subjunctive.

Once again, be careful with the first and third person formations as they are identical. Make it clear who you are talking about. I know that was a lot of information to digest in one single post. But, when you analyze the Spanish tenses closely, you can see that many of them change only slightly from one to the other, and that perfect tenses are quite easy to master as their conjugations are the same for every verb.

Do you want to know the good news? There are no more tenses or conjugations! Now, you know them all and you can focus on introducing them one by one to your daily conversations in Spanish.

Sign up for a free class to work through all 18 tenses with native Spanish teachers from Guatemala! Your email address will not be published. January 13, by Luis F. Dominguez Spanish Grammar 2 comments. Just type in your name and email and we will immediately send the page Spanish Verb Tense Guide to your inbox!

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