the Spanish present tense

when to use it

Use it for routines, habits, facts and states - anything that is true now rather than finished or still to come. It also covers something that has been going on for a length of time and still is: Spanish says aprendo español desde hace tres años where English reaches for a past tense.

Words that tend to sit with it: normalmente, todos los días, siempre, a veces

• vivo en Londres ~ I live in London
• mi hermano juega al fútbol los sábados ~ my brother plays football on Saturdays

how to build it

Remove the -ar / -er / -ir, then add the ending.

one verb from each group

The three regular patterns side by side, so the only thing changing between columns is the group the verb belongs to.

what goes wrong

Reaching for the present continuous every time the English says -ing. Spanish uses the plain present for habits, and estoy hablando only for something happening at this actual moment.

The present has the most rule-breakers of any tense: stem-changers where the middle vowel shifts (pienso, juego), -go verbs whose yo form grows a g (tengo, hago, salgo), and a handful that follow nothing at all (soy, voy, sé).

common questions

how do you conjugate the present tense in Spanish?

Take the infinitive, remove the -ar, -er or -ir, and add the ending for the person. -ar verbs take -o, -as, -a, -amos, -áis, -an; -er verbs take -o, -es, -e, -emos, -éis, -en; -ir verbs are the same as -er except in nosotros and vosotros, where they take -imos and -ís.

why do some Spanish verbs change in the middle in the present tense?

They are stem-changing verbs, and the change follows a fixed pattern: the vowel in the stem shifts in every person except nosotros and vosotros. Pensar becomes pienso but pensamos; poder becomes puedo but podemos. The endings themselves are completely regular.