Spanish sentences without a subject
Written by: Monica
Teaching has always been my passion and not my job. Over the last 16 years, I have taught a wide variety of age -groups, and levels, but my commitment has been always aimed at maximizing every student’s performance and making the learning process less challenging and more enjoyable.
Therefore, my students learn how to perform in the four skills through a wide range of dynamic activities related to everyday situations and not through infinite doses of theory and memorization. I strongly believe in teaching as a tool to create and innovate, being my main goal, to offer a meaningful experience over the journey in which learning happens inadvertently.
Spanish conjugations can blow anyone’s mind at the beginning. Unlike the English Language, each verb has a specific conjugation according to the person. Meaning, verbs change depending on the pronoun, and also on the tense.
Let’s focus on the present tense:
In English, you would say,
● I eat
● You eat
● She eats
● We eat
● You eat
● They eat
As you can see, the verb slightly changes only when it comes to the third person in the present simple tense and you just need to add an “S” at the end.
However, in Spanish, the verb changes ALL THE TIME, and how their endings change depends on each pronoun.
Here are some examples:
Yo ———————— como
Tú ————————comes
Él o ella ——————-come
Nosotros – Nosotras—-comemos
Vosotros- Vosotras——-coméis
Ellos – Ellas————— comen
The verb changes a lot, doesn’t it? You must be wondering what the rule is. The good news is that when it comes to regular verbs, the endings are similar and it only depends on three types of endings. Spanish verbs in their infinitive form can only end in ar, er, or ir.
For example,
CANTAR (ar) singing, COMER (er) eating, REIR (ir) laughing
Today we are going to be focusing only on those finishes in“AR”. I don’t want you
to feel overwhelmed. Let’s do it!
TO SING —CANTAR —– It finishes in “AR”
Yo ————————canto
Tú ————————cantas
Él o ella ——————-canta
Nosotros – Nosotras—-cantamos
Vosotros- Vosotras——-cantáis
Ellos – Ellas————— cantan
Let’s try now with another verb finishing in “AR” to see how similar the endings are, and compare it to the last one.
TO WORK—-trabajar— It finishes in “AR”
Can you see the similarities? It’s not that hard, right? I invite you to practice with more regular verbs finishing in AR.
But … now you know how the conjugations work, omit the pronoun as native speakers do.
Then – “Yo canto” becomes just “Canto” and “Yo Trabajo” becomes “Trabajo”. Both cases represent the first person without mentioning it.
Do not forget that this rule works only for REGULAR verbs. I recommend you not to use irregular verbs yet, because those, dear friend, are a very different story that we can figure out in another chapter.
Alternatively, book a free Spanish lesson with me so that I can explain this to you in more detail! – Monica
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