Irregular Verbs (Past)
I. Intro
At this point we’re ready to learn the past tense of the verbs with irregular yo forms, go-verbs, and stem-changers that we learned in the previous lesson. This time we have three nifty little groups that will help you learn the verb forms.II. Irregular Verbs in the Past: 3 stem groups
With all of this under our belt, we’re now ready to attack this final group of irregular verb forms.As it turns out, this is a class of verbs that change stem in all forms in the past tense, and we’re able to conveniently divide them into three groups: “U” stem, “I” stem, and “J” stem:
| “U” stem: | estar, andar, caber, saber, poner, poder, tener | “I” stem: | hacer, querer, venir | “J” stem: | traer, decir, verbs ending in -cir (conducir, producir, traducir, etc) |
“U” stems:
| estar | estuv- |
| andar | anduv- |
| caber | cup- |
| saber | sup- |
| poner | pus- |
| poder | pud- |
| tener | tuv- |
Use this stem plus the following ending to form the past tense of these verbs: -e, -iste, -o, -imos, -isteis, -ieron