Spanish present tense irregular verbs

As I promised in my previous post: Spanish present tense, this post is about the Spanish present tense irregular verbs.

At the beginning, it might seem a little complicated but once you start practicing it will become so much easier.

Remember that if you learn the present tense of regular verbs, you’ll find it easier to learn other verb tenses (as the subjunctive). So my advice to you is to practice the Spanish present tense of irregular verbs a lot so you get a good basis to build your knowledge of Spanish irregular verbs.

Let’s get started!

Irregular verbs in Spanish present tense

Before starting talking about irregular verbs, I’d like for you to think if you’d rather memorize basic irregular verbs in present or if you’d rather have a deep knowledge of them.

If what you want is to learn some basic irregular verbs in Spanish present tense, I’d advise to visit this page and download the free resource in there. In this list you’ll find the most common conjugated irregular verbs in Spanish present tense (indicative).

Here’s a video lesson to show you how Spanish present tense irregular verbs work

Spanish present tense irregular verbs summary

• -E TO -IE AND -O TO -UE CHANGES

Both irregularities are pretty frequent in verbs of every Spanish present tense conjugation. I’m not going to bore you with a theory lecture about how this works but I am going to show you this with two Spanish present tense irregular verbs.

CERRAR	PODER
CIERRO	PUEDO
CIERRAS	PUEDES
CIERRA	PUEDE
CERRAMOS	PODEMOS
CERRÁIS	PODÉIS
CIERRAN	PUEDEN

 

As you can see from the example above, irregularities appear in every person except for the first and second person plural (nosotros/vosotros). Easy, right? Let’s keep going.

• -E TO -I CHANGE

This irregularity works the same way as the previous one. The difference between both is that in this one it appears two more letters: a vowel is changed for another one. It happens to every person except for nosotros/as and vosotros/as. This irregular verb has this irregularity:

PEDIR
Yo	PIDO
Tú	PIDES
Él	PIDE
Nosotros	PEDIMOS
Vosotros	PEDÍS
ellos	PIDEN

Irregularities only for the first person singular 

• -G- IN THE FIRST PERSON (YO)

Some verbs change their infinitive ending (-AR/-ER/-IR) into a G plus the irregular verb ending (-O) in the first person singular: YO. The rest of persons are conjugated as regular verbs. To make it clearer, here’s an example:

SALIR
Yo	SAL-G-O
Tú	SALES
Él	SALE
Nosotros	SALIMOS
Vosotros	SALÍS
ellos	SALEN

 

• -ZC- IN YO (FIRST PERSON SINGULAR)

Just as the previous case, this irregularity only appears in the first person (yo) and the rest of persons are conjugated as a regular verb. It’s the case of irregular verbs as CONOCER, PRODUCIR OR CONDUCIR. Here’s an example:

PRODUCIR
Yo	PRODU-ZC-O
Tú	PRODUCES
Él	PRODUCE
Nosotros	PRODUCIMOS
Vosotros	PRODUCÍS
ellos	PRODUCEN

I hope this post with video lesson about Spanish present tense irregular verbs help you to understand better. ¡Espero tus comentarios! 🙂

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