Lesson 3

Text

Here are a couple of sentences and short dialogs about people planning/doing leisure activities. Besides the new vocabulary you should also have a look at how the verbs are conjugated depending on the subject of the sentence.

Dialogo – Los Verbos

Maria viaja a México Luis: ¿Qué hacen por la noche? Ana y Carmen: Nosotras bailamos en la fiesta. Raúl: ¿Qué haces mañana? Carlos: Mañana practico al tenis. Marco mira la televisión porque hace mal tiempo. Pedro y Mario toman unos refrescos. Rosalía escribe a sus padres los domingos.

As you may see, each verb is bolded. These verbs are conjugated, that is, changed by the person(s) to which they are referring. Notice that subject pronouns are not necessary.

Vocabulary for text

El Vocabulario – Viajar

Travelling viajar hacer la noche bailar la fiesta mañana practicar mirar porque buen tiempo mal tiempo tomar beber el refresco el domingo escribir los padres to travel to do, to make night to dance party tomorrow to practice to watch, to look at because nice weather bad weather to take, to drink to drink soda, soft drink Sunday to write parents

Regular Verbs

Spanish has three different types of regular verbs: -ar, -er, and -ir verbs. The subject pronoun is not necessary and in conversational Spanish it is only used for emphasis. For this lesson, we will omit it. One can still use pronouns, however. The conjugation pattern is the following:

Gramática – El presente regular

Person -ar -er -ir Infinitive hablar comer vivir English to talk to eat to live 1 hablo como vivo 2 hablas comes vives 3 habla come vive 4 hablamos comemos vivimos 5 hablais comeis vivís 6 hablan comen viven

As one can see, the endings for each person are different. This is similar to other Romance languages, such as Portuguese and Italian (the notable exception is French). This is the reason why we may omit the pronouns while we speak. Remember that sometimes it is best to clarify whether él, ella, or usted is speaking, because they share the same form. However, the context of the rest of the sentence sometimes clarifies this. There are a few steps involved with conjugating a verb. Here are the steps involved:

1. Take the ending off of the infinitive. This is either an -ar, -er, or -ir.
2. Without the -ar, -er, or -ir, the verb is in its base form.
3. Add the appropriate ending to the base of the verb.

Notice that there are only two differences between the conjugations of -er and -ir verbs. The nosotros (4) and vosotros (5) forms are the only differences. Those forms have an “i” in the stem instead of an “e.”

“G” Verbs

The verb hacer means to do or to make. Hacer is irregular in the first person singular form (I) of the present tense only. The irregular form is hago. Hacer is one of the many verbs in Spanish which add a “g” in the first person singular of the verb. This is the present indicative of the verb hacer.

Gramática – El verbo hacer

Person Verb form 1 hago 2 haces 3 hace 4 hacemos 5 haceis 6 hacen

Note that the verb hacer is translated as to do and to make when referring to activities. But it can also be used to talk about some weather conditions:

But:

When speaking about the weather using hacer, the Ud. form (third singular form) is always used.

El vocabulario (Vocabulary) – Los días (Days)

• The Spanish week begins on Monday (el lunes), unlike the English week (which begins on Sunday/el domingo).