The regular -ar endings
The present tense of a regular -ar verb is built by chopping off the -ar from the infinitive and bolting on one of six endings:
| Person | Ending | hablar (to speak) |
|---|---|---|
| yo | -o | hablo |
| tú | -as | hablas |
| él / ella / usted | -a | habla |
| nosotros | -amos | hablamos |
| vosotros | -áis | habláis |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | -an | hablan |
Two example sentences:
- Hablo español todos los días. (I speak Spanish every day.)
- Mis padres hablan francés en casa. (My parents speak French at home.)
That table is the most valuable single thing on this page. Roughly 40 of the 42 -ar verbs the curriculum teaches in its first 1,000 words follow it without modification. Learn it once, apply it to trabajar, comprar, tomar, esperar, llamar, llevar, mirar, necesitar, pasar, tratar, usar, escuchar, ayudar, amar, ganar, terminar, cambiar and dozens more, and you have built half a working Spanish vocabulary without learning anything new.
Stem-changing -ar verbs
A small group of -ar verbs use the regular endings but mutate the stressed vowel in the stem. There are three patterns in the top 1,000:
e to ie (pensar, empezar):
| Person | pensar (to think) | empezar (to begin) |
|---|---|---|
| yo | pienso | empiezo |
| tú | piensas | empiezas |
| él / ella / usted | piensa | empieza |
| nosotros | pensamos | empezamos |
| vosotros | pensáis | empezáis |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | piensan | empiezan |
o to ue (encontrar, recordar):
| Person | encontrar (to find) | recordar (to remember) |
|---|---|---|
| yo | encuentro | recuerdo |
| tú | encuentras | recuerdas |
| él / ella / usted | encuentra | recuerda |
| nosotros | encontramos | recordamos |
| vosotros | encontráis | recordáis |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | encuentran | recuerdan |
u to ue (jugar - the only verb in Spanish that does this):
| Person | jugar (to play) |
|---|---|
| yo | juego |
| tú | juegas |
| él / ella / usted | juega |
| nosotros | jugamos |
| vosotros | jugáis |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | juegan |
The pattern is what teachers call the 1-2-3-6 rule, or the boot: the change happens in yo, tú, él and ellos (singular plus 3rd-plural), and it stays away from nosotros and vosotros. The reason is stress. Spanish stress lands on the stem in those four forms and on the ending in nosotros/vosotros - the vowel only breaks when it is the one being hit. Draw the conjugation table out and circle the four changed forms, and they make the shape of a boot. That mnemonic is silly but it sticks.
Spelling-shift -ar verbs
A separate group of -ar verbs - buscar, pagar, llegar, jurar among the ones on this page - need spelling adjustments in some tenses to preserve the consonant sound: -car becomes -qu before e, -gar becomes -gu before e, -zar becomes -c before e. The good news: none of these shifts appear in the present indicative. Busco, buscas, busca, buscamos, buscáis, buscan are all spelled with -c. The spelling shift is something you meet in the preterite (busqué) and the subjunctive (busque), not here. Mention parked for now.
The fully-irregular -ar verbs
Out of 42 top-1,000 -ar verbs, only two break the regular endings: estar and dar. Both are irregular only in the yo form, and both are worth memorising as standalone items because you use them every day.
| Person | estar (to be) | dar (to give) |
|---|---|---|
| yo | estoy | doy |
| tú | estás | das |
| él / ella / usted | está | da |
| nosotros | estamos | damos |
| vosotros | estáis | dais |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | están | dan |
Note the written accents on estás, está, están - those are not optional. The yo forms (estoy, doy) take a -y ending that is unique to a handful of common verbs (also soy, voy). Everything else follows the regular pattern.
The verbs in this curriculum
The full searchable list lives at the bottom of the page. A handful of behaviour notes worth highlighting first:
- Stem-changing: pensar and empezar (e > ie), encontrar and recordar (o > ue), jugar (u > ue). Conjugate as regular -ar in nous and vous; everything else stem-changes.
- Fully irregular: estar (yo estoy, written accents on estás / está / están) and dar (yo doy). Two oddballs, both fully covered above.
- Backward construction: gustar and encantar. The thing that is liked is the grammatical subject; the person who likes it is the indirect object. "Me gusta el café" is literally "coffee is pleasing to me". The verb agrees with the thing: "me gustan los libros". This trips up every English speaker; it's not a conjugation problem (the endings are regular) but it changes the sentence shape.
How to internalise -ar conjugation
Drill the six endings as a rhyme: o, as, a, amos, áis, an. Say it out loud, in order, every day for a week, until you can produce it faster than you can think about it. The point is not to memorise the table as a thing you look up - the point is to make the six endings reflexive, so that when you reach for a verb in conversation the ending arrives without conscious effort.
The second move is to pair every new -ar verb you learn with a sentence you would actually say. Not the textbook sentence. A sentence about your week. Trabajo en Londres. Llamo a mi madre los domingos. Compro café en la estación. The endings stick when they are attached to your own life, not to a fictional Juan who lives in Salamanca.
The stem-changers feel disorienting at first - pienso looks nothing like pensar - but you only need to remember them on yo, tú, él and ellos. Nosotros and vosotros revert to the regular stem. Once you have internalised the boot shape, the four verbs in the top 1,000 that do this become routine. The two true irregulars (estar, dar) are common enough that you will meet them in your first week of study and have them automatic by the end of your first month.
That is the whole system. Six endings, one boot rule for stem-changes, two irregular yo forms. From here, every new -ar verb you meet is just vocabulary.