Tips for Learning Spanish Verbs

Transcript: Hi, Steve Kaufmann, I'm back from Palm Springs. I'm back in Vancouver and I'm going to work in my tower, call it the Montaigne Tower. This is the top floor of our house. You can't see the beautiful wooden beams, although I can show you. I'm going to talk about Spanish verbs and for the romance languages, I think verbs are the biggest problem. So I'm looking around my room here and I happen to have a book called Portuguese Verbs. You look at it, you know, imperatives, imperatives, affirmative verbs, imperatives ending in this, that and the other, pages and pages of irregular verbs, conjunctions, verbs expressing desire, doubt and will. I mean it's scary and all the different endings.

Having spent so much time studying verb tables, I was convinced that it was impossible. At best, you could have a book like this on Spanish verbs and keep it in the bathroom to read through while you're on the toilet, but in my opinion it's impossible to memorize. What should you do? Again, I looked into LingQ, because I haven't been studying Spanish at LingQ recently, so I saved a few verbs and, to be fair, among the dictionaries we have access to is one called SpanishDict.com and it's fantastic. You open up any verb and you'll see the conjugation, you'll see examples, you'll see a short video and of course, you'll see the meaning.

If you read enough in Spanish, listen enough, pay attention to the language, if you revisit this type of explanation from time to time, but mostly based on the fact that repeated exposure, especially in different contexts, will eventually help you to understand the natural meaning of Spanish verbs, then you can master Spanish verbs. I wouldn't use the word 'master' because I don't believe that's a word that can be applied to language learning, but the more you expose yourself to Spanish verbs, the better your Spanish will become. You won't have to worry about using the third person singular past tense, etc., it will start to come naturally.

So my advice on Spanish verbs is to read and listen a lot and if you happen to come across LingQ, choose SpanishDict as your dictionary of choice. Even if you get a quick explanation of a verb through our User Suggestions or via Google Translate, open SpanishDict and every time you come across a verb, quickly review the different conjugation endings, but don't try to memorize it, then go back to enjoying whatever you're reading and of course listening to it.

I hope that was helpful, bye for now.