Present Tense of Regular -ER Verbs

Spanish: El presente de los verbos regulares en -ER

Level: A1 Beginner

Category: verbs

Explanation

Verbs ending in -ER form the second group of regular verbs in Spanish. Some very common examples are comer (to eat), beber (to drink), leer (to read), aprender (to learn), and comprender (to understand). In the present tense, these verbs follow a fixed and easy-to-learn pattern. To conjugate a regular -ER verb, we remove the -er ending from the infinitive to get the stem. For example, from comer we get the stem com-. Then we add the endings: -o, -es, -e, -emos, -éis, -en. This gives us: yo como, tú comes, él/ella come, nosotros comemos, vosotros coméis, ellos comen. The endings of -ER verbs are very similar to those of -AR verbs, but they use the vowel e instead of a. This means that if you already know the -AR verbs, learning the -ER verbs is very simple. Just change the main vowel. Remember that in Spanish we often do not need to use the personal pronoun (yo, tú, él), because the verb ending already tells us who is doing the action. For example, "como" already means "I eat".

Examples

• Yo como un croissant en el café. - I eat a croissant at the café.
• ¿Tú bebes café o té? - Do you drink coffee or tea?
• Ella lee el menú con atención. - She reads the menu carefully.
• Nosotros comemos paella los domingos. - We eat paella on Sundays.
• Los turistas leen el folleto del museo. - The tourists read the museum brochure.