¡BIENVENIDOS! Welcome! Verbs tend to be one of the more difficult aspects of Spanish for students, and verb conjugation books are the key to overcoming this difficulty. The three main sections in The Everything® Spanish Verb Book are lessons, verb tables, and the appendix. You should start with the lessons that present the basic aspects of Spanish verb conjugation. The verb tables serve as a quick-reference guide to over 250 of the most common Spanish verbs. The third section is a list of 1,000 verbs that are conjugated similarly to one of the verbs in the verb charts.
Unlike some other Spanish verb books, the verb tables here only include simple (single verb) conjugations. This is because compound (double verb) conjugations are based on simple conjugations and are very easy to figure out, so there is no need to conjugate hundreds of verbs into another seven or eight tenses. In addition, each of the more than 250 verbs in the tables has a brief description of its conjugation pattern.
How to Use This Book
The 250 verbs conjugated in the following tables are the most common and useful Spanish verbs, listed in alphabetical order. Note that the Spanish alphabet has twenty-eight letters: A B C CH D E F G H I J K L LL M N Ñ O P Q R S T U V X Y Z. This means CH and LL are each considered a single letter in Spanish. When you look at the verb charts, you need to be aware that they do not comply with what you might consider the “normal” way to alphabetize.
On each verb page, you'll find the Spanish verb, its English translation, and its type and conjugation pattern. Verbs that may be used reflexively also include the English translation of the reflexive, marked with (se). You will then see the verb conjugated into the eight simple tenses (including both forms of the imperfect subjunctive) as well as the verb's present and past participles.
The conjugations appear with matching pronouns. For the sake of simplicity, only one grammatical person is listed for each verb conjugation in the tables: yo, tú, él, nosotros, vosotros, and ellos. The only exception is the third person singular and plural of the imperative, for which Ud. and Uds. are listed instead of él and ellos, since there is no imperative for he, she, and they.
The 250 verbs will serve as conjugation model verbs for 1,000 additional verbs listed in the appendix. Each additional verb includes a translation and a model verb that you can use for reference. For example, if you look up devenir, the model verb listed will be venir, since these two verbs follow the exact same conjugation pattern. (Note that if you look up venir in the appendix, it will be repeated in the model verb column.)
The following abbreviations and terms are used in the verb tables and appendix: s.o. (someone), s.t. (something), inf (informal), and defective (verb that lacks conjugations for one or two grammatical persons).