2.1 The Anatomy of a Verb
Let's look at the anatomy of a verb. We'll use the verbs hablar (to speak), comer (to eat), and vivir (to live) as points of reference.
Spanish verbs can be broken into two parts:
- The stem or root tells us what action we're talking about
- The verb ending tells us things like who does that action and when (and some even more fun things we'll see in a later lesson)
2.2 Three Types of Verbs
The above verbs are in their infinitive form; in Spanish they end in -AR, -ER, or -IR.
The Infinitive
The infinitive is the unconjugated or non-personal form of a verb.
Here are some more verbs in their infinitive form. They can be categorized by their endings:
| -AR Verbs | -ER Verbs | -IR Verbs |
|---|---|---|
| hablar - to speak | comer - to eat | vivir - to live |
| mirar - to look | beber - to drink | existir - to exist |
| estudiar - to study | correr - to run | abrir - to open |
You can probably already tell that the infinitive isn't very useful on its own. It's rather ethereal…it doesn't convey any information about who is doing the action or when it's happening.
Infinitives…unencumbered by time & space
To convey more information we will need to change–conjugate–the verb form. So how do we conjugate? To start, we'll need some subject pronouns. We'll learn more about those in the next lesson.