# Spanish Verbs (please help me categorize them) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 14, 2013, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253 "2013-08-14T21:20:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Shooby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f475e1/32.png) [@Shooby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shooby)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/1 "2013-08-14T21:20:11Z")
I’m making a game that drills Spanish verbs, and want to be able to let the player choose what kind of verbs they’re drilling. As far as I can see, the easiest way to categorize Spanish verbs is: - regular -ar verbs - regular -ir verbs - regular -er verbs - irregular verbs Is there any good way to break up the irregular verbs into different groups? I haven’t found any decent categorization system online anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/2 "2013-08-14T21:40:06Z")
Some of the irregulars are -go verbs. My teacher called them “go-go verbs”. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/3 "2013-08-15T04:34:12Z")
The irregulars are also -ar, -er or -ir. You’re looking at two different characteristics: ending is one, regularity another. Our verbs have a lot more forms than English ones, the irregularity may happen in a single one (the participle is a frequent case) with every other single form being regular; that “list of irregular verbs” which pretty much every ESL student was expected to cram doesn’t make much sense for Spanish as the matrix would need to be so much bigger. Other characteristics you may want to use as they’re useful for understanding grammar is whether the verb is transitive, intransitive, reflexive, copulative… these different kinds of verbs produce different phrasal structures, they’re accompanied by different subjects and complements. ---
**Author:** ![Shooby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f475e1/32.png) [@Shooby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shooby)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/4 "2013-08-15T05:52:25Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > The irregulars are also -ar, -er or -ir. You’re looking at two different characteristics: ending is one, regularity another. Our verbs have a lot more forms than English ones, the irregularity may happen in a single one (the participle is a frequent case) with every other single form being regular; that “list of irregular verbs” which pretty much every ESL student was expected to cram doesn’t make much sense for Spanish as the matrix would need to be so much bigger. > > Other characteristics you may want to use as they’re useful for understanding grammar is whether the verb is transitive, intransitive, reflexive, copulative… these different kinds of verbs produce different phrasal structures, they’re accompanied by different subjects and complements. Thanks for your response. I think I should tell you that this is for a verb conjugation game, so I’m looking for easy ways to divide the irregular verbs along conjugation lines, and if there are any neat groups within them. Transitive, intransitive, and reflexive are ways to break it up by usage, but they don’t inform the conjugation patterns. There are many Spanish verbs which seem almost regular, but differ in only a few cases, like cazar, which is irregular in preterito 1p singular (cacé) and present subjunctive (z becomes c). Then there’s avergonzar which is irregular in a few more cases (mostly present indicative and subjunctive). And there are a bunch of verbs which are pretty irregular the whole way through (andar, etc.). But I guess my issue is I’d like to break up the massive irregular verb group along some conjugation lines, and I can’t seem to find good ways to do so. Should I do it the way I was just talking about, by “mostly regular”, “kinda regular”, and “not regular at all”? Or is there a better linguistic-oriented division? ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/5 "2013-08-15T10:08:35Z")
**Shooby** , would this help?. [Click under Apéndices, and then pick the first option (Apéndice 1)](http://lema.rae.es/dpd/). It’s the _Diccionario panhispánico de dudas_. It will require you to read in Spanish, but they have good examples of all the regular verbs (ar, er, ir), and most of the full conjugation of some obvious irregular verbs. They do count as irregular some that are regular, but due to their ending, some of their verb forms change (like the verbs ending in -eer). There are also some standalone irregular verbs, just like English. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/6 "2013-08-15T10:24:10Z")
> [@Shooby](#): > > Thanks for your response. I think I should tell you that this is for a verb conjugation game, so I’m looking for easy ways to divide the irregular verbs along conjugation lines, and if there are any neat groups within them. Transitive, intransitive, and reflexive are ways to break it up by usage, but they don’t inform the conjugation patterns. Shrug, some of our own conjugation exercises involved co-particles (auxiliary verbs and pronouns); the conjugations of transitive _disfrazar_ and its reflexive brother _disfrazarse_ are identical in the verb-word, but when the exercise was about _disfrazarse_, you had to include the reflexive pronoun. And this is an example in which the two verbs are simply the same one referred to a third party or to oneself - there are others where the reflexive and transitive siblings have very different meanings. As you noted, there are verbs which will be completely regular for certain tenses and irregular for others. RAE doesn’t, but many textbooks which list irregular verbs will list only those tenses for which they are irregular (so, you know everything else works “as normal for that conjugation”), and italicize those specific terms which are irregular. So for example _leer_’s presents or imperfects wouldn’t be listed and its _pretérito perfecto_ would have been listed as: Yo leí Tú leíste _Él/ella leyó_ Nosotros leímos Vosotros leísteis _Ellos leyeron_ Rather than trying to memorize an irregular verb’s whole conjugation, the expectation was on learning regular ones as the basis, and then each “funky” one as an exception to that basic rule. Some seem to keep giving trouble to people forever: it’s not _imprimido_, damnit, it’s _impreso_! As for how to break up irregular verbs along conjugation lines, I’ve only seen it done by conjugation. Three of them. The breakup refers to the common forms, not to the irregulars. Even _ser_ was taught to us as “second conjugation but it’s the crazy cousin”. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/7 "2013-08-15T10:31:08Z")
Oh, a couple of exercises which may be interesting to include: reverse conjugation, that is, given the form identify which one(s) it is, —\> this one was done for practice but considered nasty enough to never be used in an exam given a verbal tense, identify which forms (if any) are irregular ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/8 "2013-08-15T10:35:40Z")
> [@Shooby](#): > > There are many Spanish verbs which seem almost regular, but differ in only a few cases, like cazar, which is irregular in preterito 1p singular (cacé) and present subjunctive (z becomes c). Two details: first, “pretérito” is a whole bunch of different tenses; you need to identify which specific one. Second, changing z to c is not quite irregular: what would be irregular would be the combination ze (Zenobia Camprubí’s name notwithstanding). It’s phonetically regular, and ortographically the rule of “/ze/ is spelled ce, /zi/ is spelled ci” trumps “keeping a verb’s root”, so ortographically regular as well. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/9 "2013-08-15T12:00:34Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > As for how to break up irregular verbs along conjugation lines, I’ve only seen it done by conjugation. Three of them. The breakup refers to the common forms, not to the irregulars. Even _ser_ was taught to us as “second conjugation but it’s the crazy cousin”. It may have been different styles or different years of teaching speaking because we always were taught ser was irregular from the get go. Yes, there are others that were taught “regular for most cases, irregulars for this conjugation”. I _think_ that is something that the Appendixes were trying to showcase. They had the purely regular verbs, and then verbs that were irregulars by themselves and verbs that were irregular sometimes in some conjugations due to their ending (besides -ar, -er, -ir). Those that fall in the second were also mentioned to only be examples of other verbs that end similarly. They also have all the conjugations, not just the simple past, present, and future. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/10 "2013-08-15T16:02:55Z")
I never saw a grammar book in Spanish which had only the simple present, past and future of the indicative. SSL ones yes, but then, I’ve also had French grammar lessons where a tense was given the name of its mode and not its proper full name. I hate that, because then you get your hands on some “real” grammar books (or simply on Le Conjugateur de Le Figaro) and stuff doesn’t match up. We were taught ser was irregular from the get go, but it was both irregular and second conjugation; no verb was “conjugation-less”, not matter how irregular, so ser was second even though it’s got more irregular forms than regular ones. Shrug, complaints to whomever designed our different curricula. ETA: guess it’s a bit like the question of where do you stick certain islands or countries when splitting the world into continents - and different countries even use different continents! (Where the heck do you stick Tristan da Cunha?) ---
**Author:** ![Shooby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f475e1/32.png) [@Shooby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shooby)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/11 "2013-08-15T19:59:52Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Oh, a couple of exercises which may be interesting to include: > > reverse conjugation, that is, given the form identify which one(s) it is, —\> this one was done for practice but considered nasty enough to never be used in an exam > given a verbal tense, identify which forms (if any) are irregular Thanks for the suggestion, may implement it, but first I’m focusing on the first type of exercise. > [@Nava](#): > > As for how to break up irregular verbs along conjugation lines, I’ve only seen it done by conjugation. Three of them. The breakup refers to the common forms, not to the irregulars. Even _ser_ was taught to us as “second conjugation but it’s the crazy cousin”. Darn, that’s what I was fearing. I guess I could just break them up by irregular -er, -ar, -ir, just because 3 groups is better than 1, even though it’s kind of a superficial distinction. May post the link here if/when it gets done. Also, I’ve appreciated all the replies - I love seeing people with better linguistic knowledge than me geek out on this stuff. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/12 "2013-08-15T21:23:03Z")
Ah, I think I get the nitpicking apart. According to what you can see in the website I linked to, there are three regular verb forms (-ar, -er, -ir). Then there are irregular verbs. I was not taught “this is the irregular verb ser, which is supposed to be second form (-er), but follows its own rules”. I was taught straight up “ser is irregular, here is the conjugation model.” So it seems that yes, one way of grouping is to say “these are the regular verbs -ar, -er, -ir”, and “irregular verbs from first (-ar), second (-er), and third (-ir) forms”. Perhaps after each regular form (all the -ar verbs), go into all the irregular verbs that also end in -ar. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2013, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/13 "2013-08-16T02:09:56Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > **Shooby** , would this help?. [Click under Apéndices, and then pick the first option (Apéndice 1)](http://lema.rae.es/dpd/). It’s the _Diccionario panhispánico de dudas_. It will require you to read in Spanish, but they have good examples of all the regular verbs (ar, er, ir), and most of the full conjugation of some obvious irregular verbs. > > They do count as irregular some that are regular, but due to their ending, some of their verb forms change (like the verbs ending in -eer). There are also some standalone irregular verbs, just like English. Great site. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2013, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-verbs-please-help-me-categorize-them/666253/14 "2013-08-16T03:34:00Z")
> [@Shooby](#): > > Darn, that’s what I was fearing. I guess I could just break them up by irregular -er, -ar, -ir, just because 3 groups is better than 1, even though it’s kind of a superficial distinction. > > May post the link here if/when it gets done. > > Also, I’ve appreciated all the replies - I love seeing people with better linguistic knowledge than me geek out on this stuff. The good part is that it gives you three levels: 1. the player knows all verbs presented will be regular, 2. the player knows all will be irregular, 3. mixed Add “single conjugation” and “any conjugation” and you have quite a lot of possibilities which at the same time aren’t too difficult to manage programming-wise (I think you just need a couple of flags - make it three: conjugation, regular tense, regular form).