Right so I thought it might be cool if there was just three tenses (past, present, and future) instead of those overwhelming verb tables that we used to look at in college. The good thing about Spain is that they are actually quite fond of using the simple past and simple present, so it won’t sound all too weird. The only thing is that you’re still going to have to conjugate the present tense, but there’s no way of avoiding that…

Present tense

As I said, we’re going to have to conjugate here, so we’re just gonna have to suck it up and learn these particular endings. Notice that the “-er” and “-ir” verb endings are actually the same apart from the nosotros and vosotros form, which do make the distrinction.

The present tense is also a pain because of the amount of irregular verbs there are, not least the dreaded ser, estar, and ir. I’m going to include a few of the absolute most important ones below, italicising their irregular forms.

There’s also a few that only go irregular when talking about yo. I’ve included these in the grid below. Their other forms are all completely regular.

Here’s some examples to finish off the present tense:

• Mi hermana tiene un novio (My sister has a boyfriend) Irregular
• Preparo la cena los domingos (I prepare tea on Sundays)
• Estamos en casa (We’re at home)
• ¿Vais a Italia? (Are yous going to Italy?) Irregular
• Quieren una cerveza (They want a beer) Irregular
• El niño tiene un libro (The boy has a book) Irregular
• No sé qué decir (I don’t know what to say) Irregular

Past tense

The past is the second easiest tense to learn, because we can get away with just using the verb haber (making like “to have” done something, but not “to have” as in to own something) and then the past participle of the verb we want to use. That means we just learn the form of haber for each of the six persons. Remember that the “h” is always silent!

Now the past participles, which as I said, are laughably easy:

Except for a few irregular verbs, but I have outlined the most frequent ones below, there’s not that many. Even ser (sido), estar (estado) and ir (ido) are regular! A miracle!

Here’s some examples of how this pretty easy structure works:

• Hemos ido a la playa (We went to the beach)
• ¿Has comido ya? (Have you eaten already?)
• Han encontrado el juego (They found the game)
• Ella ha roto el vaso (She has broken the glass) Irregular
• ¿Habéis visto la película? (Have yous seen the film?) Irregular
• ¿Has hecho la tarea? (Have you done the task?) Irregular
• María ha dicho que no (María said no) Irregular

Future tense

The future tense is so beautifully easy that it’s quite unbelievable. All we have to do is use the verb ir with the word a, creating literally “to go to…” and then shove the verb on the end in its infinitive form, so we don’t even have to modify the verb. Obviously, ir is ridiculously irregular, so we’ve to be sure that we know the six persons in present, which I’ve included below:

Here’s some examples of how this wildly easy structure works. There’s no irregulars because we don’t have to conjugate the verb!

• ¿Vas a comer algo? (Are you going to eat something?)
• Mañana voy a cantar (Tomorrow I’m going to sing)
• Van a cocinar el pollo (They are going to cook the chicken)
• Ella va a hablar ahora (She’s going to speak now)
• Hoy vamos a caminar (Today we will walk)
• ¿Vais a leer o no? (Are yous going to read or not?)
• José va a solucionar esto (José will sort this out)