UNIT THREE

Subject Pronouns and

Present Tense of Regular Verbs

Verbs in Spanish change their endings to indicate the subject – i.e. the person who is doing the action.
This means that it is not always necessary to use subject pronouns – ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, etc. However, one
significant difference between Spanish and English that needs to be understood before we can look in more
detail at verbs is the various ways of saying ‘you’.

How to say ‘you’ in Spanish

Deciding how to address someone is more complicated in Spanish than in English. There are singular and
plural forms depending on how many people you are talking to and there are also different forms depending
on how formal or familiar you want to be, so in total there are four possibilities for translating the word ‘you’
in standard Spanish:
• When you are speaking to someone you know well, such as family or friends, you would use the
familiar form, and when you are talking to a stranger or to someone with whom you want to maintain a
certain level of formality, you would use the formal one.
• When you are using the familiar form of address, the word for ‘you’ when addressing one person is tú
and if you are addressing more than one person you must use vosotros or vosotras.
• Vosotros is the used when addressing two or more people who are all masculine or when addressing
two or more people when some are masculine and some are feminine.
• Vosotras is used when addressing two or more people who are all feminine.
 For example, if you were talking to your parents, you would use vosotros, as one is masculine and one is
feminine, but if you were talking to your sisters, you would use vosotras. Since verb endings in Spanish are
distinctive and unambiguous, the use of the pronouns tú and vosotros is not common. When you are talking
to a stranger or to someone with whom you wish to be more formal, you must use usted, and when
addressing two or more people, ustedes. Usted is used with the same verb ending as ‘he’ and ‘she’, while
ustedes is used with the same verb ending as ‘they’, so in order to avoid any ambiguity, it is sometimes
necessary to include these with the verb. Usted is usually abbreviated in writing to Vd./Ud. and ustedes to
Vds./Uds.
The tendency in Spain at the moment seems to be that the familiar forms (tú and vosotros) are being
used more and more at the expense of Vd. and Vds. This is particularly true among young people. However, in
case of doubt, the recommendation, especially among adults, is to use Vd. In this case, you will never lose
face.

Subject Pronouns
We have already seen the various forms of the word ‘you’ in Spanish, so now we can look at the complete
list of subject pronouns.
Traditionally pronouns and verbs are displayed in the three ‘persons’. In the singular, ‘I’ is the ‘first
person’, ‘you’ is the second person, and ‘he/she’ is the third person. The first person plural is ‘we’, the second
person plural is ‘you’ (remember that in English ‘you’ can be singular or plural) and the third person plural is
‘they’.
The subject pronouns in Spanish are as follows:
Singular

1 yo I
2 tú you (familiar)
3 él he (or ‘it’ when referring to a masc. object)
4 ella she (or ‘it’ when referring to a fem. object) usted you (formal)

Plural

1 nosotros/nosotras we (masc./fem.)
2 vosotros/vosotras you (masc./fem. pl., familiar)
3 ellos they (masc. people or objects)
ellas they (fem. people or objects)
ustedes you (formal, pl.)

Note: The masculine plural forms ‘nosotros and ellos must be used when referring to two or more people (or
objects) when some are masculine and some are feminine, as explained above with reference to vosotros.

Regular verbs

Verbs that follow certain rules and whose forms are therefore predictable, are called ‘regular verbs’. Once
you have learnt the pattern of regular verbs you can confidently use any regular verbs in the same way.
 There are three categories of regular verbs in Spanish: -ar, -er, and -ir verbs. The -ar, -er and -ir refer to
the endings of these verbs in their infintive form, i.e. the form that you will find in the dictionary as the basis of
the verb and which can be translated as ‘to…’, e.g. trabajar ‘to work’.
There is a set of endings that correspond to each of these three types of verbs, and the endings correspond
to the three ‘persons’ explained above. The -ar group is by far the largest group of verbs and nearly all the verbs
in this group are regular.
Here is the present tense of the regular -ar verb trabajar in the singular:

1st person (yo) trabajo I work

2nd person (tú) trabajas you work (one person, familiar)
3rd person (él) trabaja he works
(ella) trabaja she works
(Vd.) trabaja you work (one person, formal)

Notice that the endings are distinctive for ‘I ’and the familiar ‘you’, so there is really no need to include the
subject pronouns yo and tú, unless you want to add emphasis:

e.g. I work, but you do not work.

Yo trabajo pero tú no trabajas.
‘He’, ‘she’ and the polite ‘you’ all use the same form. So if there is any possible ambiguity, you may need to
include the subject pronoun.
e.g. Vd. trabaja en el banco ¿no?
You work in the bank,don ’t you?
Without the Vd. in the above example the sentence could have meant ‘He works in the bank, doesn’t he?’ or
‘She works in the bank, doesn’t she?’.
Often the context of the sentence makes the meaning clear and it is not necessary to include the pronoun.
Here is the present tense of the regular -ar verb trabajar in the plural:

1st person (nosotros/nosotras) trabajamos we work

2nd person (vosotros/vosotras) trabajáis you work (familiar pl.)
3rd person (ellos) trabajan they work (masc.)
(ellas) trabajan they work (fem.)
(Vds.) trabajan you work (formal pl.)
What has been said above with reference to the possible ambiguity of the third person of the verb applies to
the plural as to the singular.
Now that you know the pattern of a regular -ar verb, you could form the present tense of any other regular -
ar verb:
e.g. hablar ‘to speak’
hablo I speak
hablas you speak
habla he/she speaks, you speak
hablamos we speak
 habláis you speak
hablan they speak, you speak
Here are some other regular -ar verbs that you could now use:
buscar to look for
estudiar to study
cantar to sing
mirar to look at
comprar to buy
nadar to swim
desayunar to have breakfast
tomar to take
escuchar to listen
viajar to travel

You will have the chance to practise using some of these verbs in the exercises at the end of this unit.
Now that you know how the present tense of regular -ar verbs work, you will have no problem with the other
two categories.
Here are the endings for regular -er and regular -ir verbs:
-er -ir
-o -emos -o -imos
-es -éis -es -ís
-e -en -e -en
Here are examples of regular -er and -ir verbs:
comer (to eat) vivir (to live)
como I eat vivo I live
comes you eat vives you live
come etc. vive etc.
comemos vivimos
coméis vivís
comen viven
Other regular -er and -ir verbs are:
beber to drink leer to read
vender to sell escribir to write