What should you be able to do?
Provide the irregular stem for the verbs listed on this page and add the irregular endings to match the subject.
What will you use this for?
The preterite tense is mostly used to narrate events in the past. It can indicate a change in state as well as the start or completion of an action in the past. It expresses actions that are completed at the moment being discussed. The use of these verbs is no different from other verbs in this tense, but they are just radically different.
How does it work?
There is a set of 12 verbs whose stems in the preterite are so different that they must be memorized. While they do not follow any discernible pattern they can be grouped together to make them a little easier to remember. The groups are based on a common letter or letter combination in the irregular stem. The four categories are those with an I, a UV, a U or a J in the stem.
The following list categorizes these irregular verbs and shows you their stem.
| I | UV | U | J |
|---|---|---|---|
hacer: hic- | andar: anduv- | poder: pud- | decir: dij- |
querer: quis- | estar: estuv- | poner: pus- | traer: traj- |
venir: vin- | tener: tuv- | saber: sup- | conducir: conduj- |
The verb hacer has one extra complication due to the two different sounds made by the letter C, but we can't address that until we look at the endings. Also, the verb conducir is a representative of all verbs that have a prefix in front of -ducir like traducir and reducir (their stems would be traduj- and reduj-). To those stems you add endings that are a combination of the AR and ER/IR endings from the regular verbs and missing the accent marks.
The endings look like this:
subject | ending |
yo | -e |
tú | -iste |
él, ella, Ud. | -o |
nosotros, nosotras | -imos |
vosotros, vosotras | -isteis |
ellos, ellas, Uds. | -ieron (-eron for "J" group) |
Since the stem for the verb hacer ends with the letter C, we have to change its spelling in the 3rd person singular. The -O ending would make the C hard like in the word "con;" in order to sound right (the soft S-like sound) we need it to be spelled with a Z instead of a C.
What this might help with later:
These same stems will be used in the past subjunctive.
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