Level 1

1. 1.1 Irregular verbs (Los verbos irregulares)

2. 1.2 Radical changing verbs (Los verbos con diptongación)

Irregular verbs

Irregular verbs have the habit of worrying people, for they seem to herald a long list of tiresome tenses to be learnt, when it would have been so much kinder if these verbs or their users had made an effort towards conformity to the types we already know. Certainly, Spanish irregular verbs are more complicated than English verbs, and there do seem to be a lot of them. However, many of them are quite rare, so that perhaps fifty irregular verbs need to be learnt, and others are compounds from shorter irregular verbs conjugated like them. Suponer comes from poner, devolver comes from volver, detener comes from tener, and so on. So, numerous Spanish irregular verbs are not unique.

Space does not allow a full tabulation of all Spanish irregular verbs. Good-quality dictionaries such as the Collins, the Oxford, or the Simon and Schuster contain all the necessary information. The Spanish Verbs by María Rosario Hollis (Teach Yourself Books) and 501 Spanish Verbs by Kendris (Barron's Educational Series) are also very helpful.

This unit is an introduction to Spanish irregular verbs, while it is suggested you refer to other units for irregularities in verbs when they are used in the future tense (unit 6), conditional (unit 9), imperfect (unit 7), perfect (unit 5), preterit (unit 8), and the subjunctive (unit 16) and imperative moods (unit 11).