Spanish Irregular Verbs

Spanish is often sold as a regular language with a pile of exceptions bolted on. That is the wrong shape. Irregularity in Spanish is concentrated almost entirely in the most frequent verbs, and it falls into groups rather than scattering. Learn the groups and the genuine one-offs come down to about six verbs.

A useful rule of thumb before we start: -ar verbs are overwhelmingly regular. Nearly all the trouble lives in -er and -ir.

Group 1: the yo-go verbs

The most valuable pattern in the language. These verbs are irregular in the yo form only, and completely regular in the other five.

Three verbs are yo-go and stem-changing at the same time, which is why they feel harder than they are:

• tener (to have): tengo, tienes, tiene, tenemos, tenéis, tienen
• venir (to come): vengo, vienes, viene, venimos, venís, vienen
• decir (to say): digo, dices, dice, decimos, decís, dicen

Group 2: the -zco verbs

Verbs ending in -cer or -cir after a vowel take -zco in the yo form. Again, everything else is regular.

This group is large and completely predictable, which makes it one of the best-value patterns to learn deliberately.

Group 3: irregular throughout

Six verbs are irregular enough in the present that they need learning form by form. They are also the six most useful verbs in Spanish, so the effort is not wasted.

Haber is not used on its own to mean "to have". It is the auxiliary that builds the perfect tenses: he comido (I have eaten). Possession is tener.

Group 4: the irregular preterites

A set of verbs shares one irregular stem plus one shared set of endings. Learn the endings once and the group opens up.

The shared endings: -e, -iste, -o, -imos, -isteis, -ieron. Note there are no written accents on the yo and él forms, unlike regular preterites.

Two footnotes that matter. Hacer spells its third person hizo, with a z, to keep the sound. Stems ending in j (dij-, traj-) drop the i from the third person plural: dijeron, not dijieron.

And the strangest pair in the language: ser and ir share an identical preterite.

Fui profesor is "I was a teacher". Fui a Madrid is "I went to Madrid". Context does all the work, and it is never actually ambiguous.

Group 5: the twelve irregular futures

The future tense is built by adding endings to the infinitive, so it is nearly always regular. Twelve verbs use a modified stem instead. The endings never change.

The same twelve stems build the conditional (tendría, haría, diría), so this table is worth twice what it looks like.

What is reliably regular

It is worth knowing where you can relax:

• The imperfect. Only three verbs are irregular in the whole language: ser (era), ir (iba) and ver (veía). Everything else is regular, including every verb above.
• The -ar verbs, almost entirely, apart from stem changes.
• The endings in stem-changing verbs, which are regular throughout.

Common mistakes English speakers make

The first is treating irregular verbs as an unstructured list. Learning hago, pongo, salgo and traigo as four separate facts is four times the work of learning one pattern with four members.

The second is using haber for possession: he un coche. Possession is tengo un coche. Haber only ever helps another verb.

The third is putting accents on irregular preterites: tuvé, estuvó. Regular preterites carry them (hablé, habló); the irregular group does not (tuve, estuvo).

The fourth is regularising the future: teneré instead of tendré. The twelve stems above are the only ones that change, but they are twelve of the most common verbs in the language, so they come up constantly.

See also

• Spanish stem-changing verbs covers the vowel changes that are not irregularity in the strict sense.
• Preterite and imperfect cover the two past tenses these verbs appear in.
• Future tense covers the regular pattern the twelve stems above depart from.
• Ser vs estar covers the two most irregular verbs in detail.