The verb “to be” is in the infinitive, which is the form of the verb that does not agree with any specific subject. In English, the infinitive is a verb that includes “to”: “to speak,” “to eat,” “to write,” “to be.” A Spanish infinitive is only one word, and it ends in –ar, –er, –ir. For example; hablar, comer, escribir, and ser are all infinitives.
When you use verbs in both languages, you will use the form that matches the subject. This is called conjugating a verb. In English, many of our verb conjugations do not change when different subjects are used. For example, “to write”: “I write, you write, they write, we write.” However: “she writes or he writes.”
In Spanish, the conjugation is more elaborate, with six different verb endings to choose from depending on the subject doing the action.
The Spanish ser, like the English “to be,” is irregular. This means that the conjugation does not follow the typical pattern. “I am, you are, he is; yo soy, tú eres, él es.” With irregular verbs, you just have to memorize all the forms. We will work on that in this section.
To understand verb conjugation in Spanish, you will also have to learn the subject pronouns. The subject of a sentence is the person, place, or thing performing the action of the sentence. Subject pronouns are words that can be used as the subject of a sentence rather than repeating the noun (Click here for an explanation of pronouns in English).
In the following section, we will work on subject pronouns and the verb ser.
