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¡Hola! Today we are exploring how to use Spanish verbs that end in -er and -ir. You will learn to change their endings to talk about what people are doing right now!
Every Spanish verb has a starting form called an infinitive. Verbs like comer (to eat) and vivir (to live) end in -er and -ir, and we must change these endings to match who is doing the action.
To conjugate these verbs, we drop the -er or -ir ending to find the stem. Then, we add a new ending that matches our subject, like adding -o for 'yo' (I).
The endings for -er and -ir verbs are almost identical. The only difference is in the nosotros (we) form, where -er verbs use -emos and -ir verbs use -imos.
Analyze the sentence "Ellos viven en Madrid" (They live in Madrid) and justify why "viven" is the correct form of the verb "vivir" (to live).
- Identify the subject of the sentence. Here, the subject is 'ellos' (they - masculine/mixed group).
- Identify the infinitive verb we want to use. The verb is 'vivir' (to live), which is an -ir verb.
- Find the stem of the verb by dropping the -ir ending. Dropping -ir from 'vivir' gives us the stem 'viv-'.
- Look up the ending for 'ellos' for -ir verbs in the present tense. The ending is -en.
- Combine the stem 'viv-' with the ending '-en' to get 'viven'. This matches our sentence perfectly, proving it is correct!
