One of the biggest challenges that people learning Spanish face is verb conjugation, as it can be a bit complicated for beginners. You might feel frustrated thinking that you have to memorize all the forms and get confused with the different modes and tenses we have in Spanish. Hi! My name is Fernely and in this post I will teach you, in a clear and simple way, the rules and everything you need to know to learn verb conjugation in the present, past, and future tenses of the Spanish language.
If you’re starting to learn the Spanish language, the first thing you need to learn is what the infinitive is, how verbs are categorized in Spanish, what components form the infinitive, what verb conjugation is, what the indicative mood is, and how we use it in Spanish.
What is the infinitive of a verb?
The infinitive is a non-personal verbal form used to express the idea of the verb in its most basic and simple form. E.g., cantar (to sing), comer (to eat) and vivir (to live). In these examples, the infinitive of the three verbs is used to express the action in a general way, without specifying who performs it or when it is performed. The infinitive is essentially the name of the verb; it is the word we use to look up the definition of such action in the dictionary. To better understand it, let’s take the first verb and form a sentence in the simple present of the indicative mood: ” Yo canto (I sing).” In contrast to cantar (to sing) (which is a non-personal verbal form called the infinitive, providing no information except the name of the action performed when carrying out the verb’s action), “Yo canto” (“I sing”) informs me of who performs the action of the verb (first person singular: I) and when this person performs the action (present tense of the indicative mood). In summary, the infinitive form is a basic verbal form used to express an action in general, without specifying who performs the verb’s action or when it is performed.