Spanish/Tenses/Indicative/Simple/Present

Some things to note: <!--  El Presente Simple
 * 1) All yo forms of regular verbs end in -o, all tú forms in -s, él forms in -a or -e, nosotros in -mos, vosotros in -is, and ellos in -n. As Spanish is a pro-drop language, you must get used to determining a verb's subject based on its ending.
 * 2) Notice the similarities between the -ER and -IR verbs. While not completely similar, they differ only in the nosotros and vosotros forms.

What is it?
As it is in English, the present tense indicates an action that is performed by a person regularly.


 * Yo duermo a las 8:00 todos los días.
 * I sleep at eight everyday.

How do we do it?
Actually, these sentences are made the same way as they're done in english. We need a subject-verb-complement construction (see the last example), the difficult part may happen when conjugating the verbs. While in English we commonly add an "-s" to verbs conjugated with "he,she,it" personal pronouns, in Spanish there is an specific conjugation for each. Let's check an example using the verb "cocinar" (to cook).


 * Yo cocino = I cook.
 * Tú cocinas = You cook. (singular-informal)
 * Vos cocinás = You cook. (singular-informal)
 * Usted cocina = You cook. (singular-formal)
 * Él cocina = He cooks.
 * Ella cocina = She cooks.
 * Nosotros cocinamos = We cook.
 * Vosotros cocináis = You cook. ''(plural-North of Spain)
 * Ustedes cocinan = You cook. (plural-LatAm)
 * Ellos cocinan = They cook. (masculine)
 * Ellas cocinan = They cook. (feminine)

So we can get a present tense sentence by adding a complement:


 * Ella cocina muy bien la pasta.
 * She cooks pasta very well.

It means that she may not be cooking pasta right now, but when she does, she's pretty good at it.

What about conjugations?
Perhaps you find them difficult to do, but there is an almost perfect rule to fight it. If you learn a verbs conjugation, its last syllables or letters in infinitive will allow you to compare it with other verbs and conjugate them the same way. Take the cocinar verb conjugation as an example and compare with other similar verbs:

NOTES: -->
 * Bold typeface marks the gramatical endings, indeed the letters in of these verbs belong to the root of the verb, and are marked only to help comparing the endings when you read them aloud.
 * "Él" (he) and "ella" (she) and "usted" (formal you, sometimes abreviated "Ud." or "Vd.") have always the same conjugation; "vos" is commonly used by many spanish-speakers (Argentina, Central America, West of Colombia), but "tú" is used by mexicans, coast people and islanders in every country; anyway, they mean the same: you (singular and informal). "Ustedes" (sometimes abreviated "Uds." or "Vds.") is mostly used by inland people and "vosotros" widely said in Spain and South America, but both mean the same: you (plural).