Subject: Verb Conjugation

The videos on this page go in the order I made them (oldest on top, newest on bottom). If you would like to see them in the opposite direction (newest on top, oldest on bottom) click here.

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  The Infinitive & Conjugation

  One of the main reasons I failed Spanish my first time through is I was lost from the beginning. On the first day, the teacher starting using words like “conjugation” and “infinitive”. I didn’t even know what those words meant in English. Woulda been nice of her to explain that, no?

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  Ser Vs. Estar

  “To be or not to be? That is the question.” I know very few lines from Shakespeare. But it’s no surprise to me that one of the few I do know, contains the verb “to be” twice. You see, I consider “to be” to be the mother of all verbs. I’d bet a lot of money that “to be” is the most frequently used verb in English and in Spanish. Anytime you say “is” “am” “are” “was” or “were”, you’re actually saying a conjugated form of “to be”. But here’s the thing. In Spanish, they have two different “to be’s”.

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  The Conjugation Strategy

  In this video, I’m going to go over the exact strategy I used when I was first learning Spanish, to practice all the different conjugations of a verb.

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  The Three Enemigos

  In this lesson, I present “ser”, “estar” and “ir” together. Very few books present “ser” and “estar” together. I don’t know why. Probably because the people who make those books have no idea how our Gringo minds work.

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  Formal Conjugation in Spanish

  If you watched the lesson called Personal Pronouns, you know there are two ways to say “you” in Spanish–formally and informally. At first this really sucks–especially since most teachers and programs don’t explain it all that well. But for this lesson, I made the video I wish I had when I started speaking Spanish.

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  Present, Regular AR Conjugation

  This lesson is very important. I’ve been avoiding conjugation almost completely until now. But it’s starting to hold us back. I wanted to talk about adverbs today, but that’s kind of hard when we don’t know any verbs. So today, you’ll learn how to conjugate regular AR verbs in the present tense. Remember, there are ER verbs, AR verbs and IR verbs. Today we’ll learn about AR verbs then in the next lesson, I’ll introduce you to ten of my favorite regular, AR verbs.

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  Present Tense, Regular ER Conjugation

  We are really getting somewhere now! In today’s video, not only will you learn how to conjugate regular ER verbs in the present tense… I’ll also teach you the word for “idiot” — and maybe give you an example too!

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  Present Tense, Regular IR Conjugation

  Today I go over the present tense, regular IR conjugation. IR verbs are the last type of regular, present tense verbs we need to learn.

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  Speak in the Future Without More Conjugation

  This is, minute-for-minute, one of the very best lessons I’ll ever give you. In this short lesson, you’ll learn how to speak perfectly in the future, without learning any more conjugations. When I first discovered this, I was pissed they hadn’t taught it to me earlier. Instead, they buried me deeper and deeper in conjugations!

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  Common Irregular E to IE Verbs (Fun with Words)

  As you now know, there are three types of verbs in Spanish: AR, ER and IR. And each type has it’s own conjugation rules–how you change the endings of the words. “Hablar” is to “talk”, but I talk is “hablo”. However, there are also irregular verbs–where not only do you change the ending based on the subject, but there’s a change to the stem too. Lots of the most common verbs in Spanish are irregular and I’m sick of avoiding them in my examples. So today, we’re gonna talk about the first kind: E to IE.

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