Complete Spanish Course – Learn Spanish the Easy Way

Before you start in on this course, I wanted to give you a quick highlight of how to use the course as I've set it up. I did not build in any quizzes using Udemy's native quiz builder. I wanted a little more control and to give you a better experience and more resources than what they allow me to do. And so I've built it on a separate site and you can find all of those quizzes under the resources drop-down on any of these video lectures. So some of them will not have any resources and you'll notice that right away, but almost all of them, the vast majority, will. You just use that drop-down, click on a given quiz, go to it, start answering the questions. Once you finish, it'll tell you your score and it'll save that quiz to your browser so that you know that you completed it. You can see all of the quizzes here on this view if you go to all quizzes, but you don't ever need to see this. They are all linked individually under these resources tab. You'll see anywhere from one to three. One or two is normal. All right, there you go. So watch video As you're beginning to learn a new language, one of the most important things you can do early on is to learn the foundation of how that language sounds. This will give you consistency in your pronunciation and most importantly, let you read things and know how to actually say them. Let's take a look into the sounds of Spanish and how they differ from English. First off, let's talk about vowels. In Spanish, vowels don't change their sounds nearly as much as in English. They stay pretty consistent. Ah is always pronounced like ah. Eh is always pronounced like the eh in best. E is always pronounced like e. O always like o. And u is always pronounced like the vowels at the end of blue. So all those vowels always sound like that. All right, consonants. For the most part, consonants are quite similar to our English counterparts, but there are a few differences that we'll highlight here. C or se in Spanish. It often sounds like the letter k. However, if it comes before an i or an e, it sounds like an s. So, for example, carcel, the word carcel, which means a jail, is pronounced like carcel. D or de. You can think of the Spanish d as halfway between a d sound and a th, as kind of a soft combined th sound, which we don't have in English. So listen carefully as you encounter this sound in Spanish. It can be a little bit tricky, but if you master it, you'll sound like a pro. G. If a g comes before an i or an e, it makes more of a soft sound like gente or gimnasio. Elsewhere, a g is hard, like the English goal, sound. For h, this is one of the first sounds that you'll encounter in Spanish by saying hola. The h sound in Spanish is almost silent. You don't really pronounce it, but it does give a little bit of a breathy air to the following vowel sound. So hola. The j, the Spanish j, is always followed by a vowel and sounds like the English h. For example, jugo sounds like hugo. Q is always followed by a u, and the combination sounds like the English que, for example, quiero. R is a little hard to describe, since it's essentially a softer version of the English r. Basically, if you drop the hard r sound at the end of the letter and replace it with just a breath, you get the Spanish r. This one is difficult as well, so be sure to listen and practice. We'll encounter that as we go. The v is somewhat of a combination between the Spanish v and b. For example, the word for cow is vaca, and you can see that it's not vaca and it's not vaca. It's vaca. So it's a little bit in between. You'll kind of get it as you listen. X. For the most part, x sounds like the English letters ks, like in sticks, how we'll often hear it in English as well. However, in some proper nouns specifically, the x sounds more like the English h, most prominently in Mexico, which sounds like Mexico. It sounds more like an h, right? The English or the Spanish y sounds a lot like the English y, such as in the word yogurt. However, if it stands alone, like the word for and, it sounds like e. It's the only case. Otherwise, it's just the y sound. The z in Spanish sounds much more like an English s. It's slightly different in that there's a little bit of the harder English z sound that sneaks in there, but you'll notice that as you go as well. Mostly, you can just think of it as a little bit of an s sound, a duplicate s. All right, that's a lot that we just covered. Don't try to memorize all that right now. That's just an overview of some of the differences in sounds of different letters between English and Spanish. You'll get a lot more practice as we go. For a lot of historical reasons that are really interesting but not super relevant right now, Spanish shares a ton of common vocabulary with English. Many of the words you know and use every day in English can be translated into Spanish with just small changes. These words fall into different categories. Let's talk about the first ones in this lesson. These are the OR words, and you get these for free, meaning that we just have to translate them directly, like with no change in spelling or just a really small change. We'll see a couple of different examples here. Here's a short list. Nope. You can read all these words. That's great. So, note that with the word professor or profesor, the two s's turn into just a single s, and also with all these nouns you can use either el or un, so the or a or an. With any of the words in the list, we just use a little each to show you how it can be done. Even though the spelling of these words doesn't change between English and Spanish, with the exception of profesor in this case, all the pronunciation rules from the previous lesson still apply, so all the Spanish pronunciation rules. In addition, these OR words in Spanish, the emphasis is on the last syllable, so color is emphasized like color. Keep in mind that the letter o always sounds like o in Spanish. Not bad for your second lesson, right? We already know a bunch of words that we don't even have to memorize, you just get them completely for free. The list that we went is just small sampling. Here's a few that you can take on the road. If you're making a movie, you need a director, editor, or how about an inspector, tutor, or mentor, right? Of course, we can't forget vector, sector, or factor. These are all the same in Spanish and English. Obviously, not always the most common words, but any that end with OR in English, you can just kind of translate straight over to Spanish with the few caveats that we noted. This is a short one. We're talking about AL words. Where's the end of the letters AL? And similar to the OR words, these are often the same in both Spanish and English. Let's take a look at some examples. Animal, criminal, canal, central, commercial, legal, local, musical, natural, personal, rural, social. Again, like the OR words, these AL words all have the emphasis on the last syllable. For example, animal. Like in the previous categories, words that end in BLE are often the same in both languages. One quick spelling note here, Spanish never uses a double S like we do in English. So when you're translating these words from English to Spanish, any double S becomes a single S. For example, possible in English becomes posible in Spanish. This is true across the board, so keep an eye out for those small differences. Let's take a look at some words ending in BLE. On these words, the emphasis is placed on the second to last syllable, so imposible is imposible. The next category is made up of words that end in English and with IC. To magically transform them into the proper Spanish words, simply add an O to the end of the English word. Most of these words end up with an accent somewhere in the middle. Still, it's nice that they're at least easily recognizable and understandable without learning anything new. Let's take a look at our list of words right here and then go over what that accent means. The accent that appears in all these words doesn't change the pronunciation of either the word or the letter it appears over. Instead, it simply marks where the emphasis is placed. In the past few categories, the emphasis was always in the same place, so we didn't need that accent mark, but here it switches around a bit. For example, the emphasis on público is in that first syllable, whereas fantástico, which has the accent on a different syllable, is fantastico. This category is made up of words that end in ENT or ANT in English. For many of these words, all you have to do is add the letter E to the end, and voila, wrong language, I know, you have the correct word in Spanish. Keep in mind that the other rules of Spanish spelling still apply. For example, when translating different into Spanish, the double F in the Let's look at some examples. Nice that you can read all of these right off the bat. Like the BLE words from a few lessons ago, these ENT and ANT words have the emphasis on the second-to-last syllable, so importante is importante. You might have noticed through the previous lessons that there are some slight spelling differences between English and Spanish, even when the words are otherwise identical between the two languages. But don't worry, they conform to rules, and they're pretty straightforward, so let's go through a few of these now in this lesson. The PH in English becomes an F in Spanish, so words like alphabet become alfabeto, elephant, elefante, teléfono, teléfono, and so on. TH becomes a T, so author, autor, throne, trono, so on. Now, there's a caveat to this, but let's go through this first. For the most part, the only letters that are ever doubled in Spanish are L and R. The double L makes a Y sound, you're probably familiar with the word pollo, which means Double R is rolled, which is probably the hardest sound to make in Spanish for English speakers. Don't worry, we'll practice it as we go along. In the case where an English word has two of the same letter next to each other, that doubled letter just becomes a single one in Spanish. So, anual, anual, attractive, atractivo, different, diferente, and so on. Okay, the caveat I spoke about. Double C. There are words that have a double C, two C's next to each other in Spanish. One of the ones that comes up the most is probably acción, which is action in English. Despite these two C's being next to each other, unlike the L and R, they don't kind of smash together and become one sound. Instead, they represent a break in a syllable and are actually two different sounds. Those two C's become two different sounds. The first C sounds like a K, and the second C has an S sound. So, the word action becomes acción, acción in Spanish. Remember that there is that syllable break between the two C's. So, it's conexión, dirección, instrucción. So, this CC is a little weird because it's kind of giving us a sneak preview to our next point, our next rule, which is that the T-I-O-N in English, you can think of, right? This isn't the kind of linguistic history of these things, but this is a way to think of this transformation, right? Your English T-I-O-N becomes C-I-O with an apostrophe, N in Spanish. So, just as we noted, they make this conversion. You can make that in your head as you're trying to use some of your English vocabulary in Spanish. And the O gets that apostrophe. However, if it's in the middle of a word, it changes to C-I-O-N with no accent over the O. So, let's see. I said apostrophe, I meant accent. Take a look at these examples. So, the word convention, convención, convencional, convencional, section, sección, nation becomes nación, and national, nacional. All right, this is a quick one. Let's talk about English words ending in I-S-T, which can be translated into Spanish, a lot of them, by simply adding an A to the end of the word. Novelista, artista, dentista, publicista, etc. Should be able to read all these. Also, words that end in O-U-S, a lot of them can become Spanish words or the Spanish equivalent by just changing out the O-U-S for O-S-O. So, famoso, curioso, ambicioso, and so on. If you're familiar with Spanish at all, you might be asking about grammatical gender and how these change. Don't worry, we'll talk about that coming up. When the subject performing an action and the object receiving that action are the same, we call that the reflexive. In English, we often use the self words for this. Myself, yourself, himself, herself, etc. Let's take these two similar sentences as an example. I see myself versus I see the dog. I see myself is reflexive because the subject and object are the same. Me, right? I see the dog is not because they're different. Myself and the dog. You've probably seen this before. When you're introducing yourself in Spanish and you tell them your name, you say me llamo and then your name. Me llamo Camar. Llamar means to call. So, when you say me llamo Juan, you're literally saying I call myself Juan. Though, because that sounds odd in English, we translate it as my name is Juan. Here are a few more examples with the literal translations. Como te llamas? What's your name? But it's literally, what do you call yourself? Me llamo Rosa. My name is Rosa. Literally, I call myself Rosa. In Spanish, this reflexive form is used far more broadly than in English. You'll see this more clearly in the coming examples. But anytime the action being performed is directed back towards the subject, we use the reflexive. This applies even if the object being acted on is just a part of the subject, like washing your face or brushing your teeth. Whereas English has the self pronouns for this kind of thing, Spanish has its own set of reflexive pronouns. So, for myself, it's me. For yourself, it's te. For himself, herself, itself, the third person, it's se. For ourselves, it's nos. And for themselves or yourselves, the third person and second person plurals, it is also se. So let's look at how these are used in practice. Me siento en la cama. I sit on the bed. It's literally, I sit myself on the bed. You see the reflexive pronoun me there. El se baña. He takes a bath. It's literally, he bathes himself. Nos cepillamos los dientes. We brush our teeth. It's literally, we brush the teeth for ourselves. So it's weird. I'm only showing you, I should say, the literal translation so that you can kind of get the idea of what this is meaning and how it's constructed, how the sentences are constructed, the actual syntax. But in reality, you're going to skip that entirely. And it'll just shortcut to the actual, like, translation that makes sense, which is me siento en la cama. I sit on the bed. Here's a note. When you're talking about parts of the body, you use the definite article el, la. So the, the, rather than the possessive. So me cepillo el pelo is correct. I brush the hair is what you say in Spanish. But really we translate it as I brush my hair. Me cepillo mi pelo is incorrect. Keep in mind that going forward, we will be using natural sounding translations, like I mentioned, that keep the meaning in English, not the literal translation. So me ducha will be, I take a shower, not I give myself a shower. You remember the infinitive form of a verb, right? Like the dictionary form before we conjugate, like ser, comer, or hablar. Well, for reflexive verbs, that infinitive includes the third person reflexive pronoun on the end. That's a mouthful. Here's an example. Llamarse means to call oneself, bañarse means to take a bath, and lavarse means to wash oneself. This is good to know, but it becomes especially relevant when there's more than one verb in a sentence. In these cases, you have two options to include the pronoun ahead of the conjugated verb and place it at the end of the infinitive, like we just looked at. Take a look at these sentences, which are identical in meaning. Me quiero bañar. Quiero bañarme. Both mean I want to take a bath. Here are a few more examples illustrating the concept. Nos queremos ver. Queremos vernos. We want to see ourselves. Él se necesita lavar las manos. Él necesita lavarse las manos. He needs to wash his hands. Ella no se puede dormir. She can't fall asleep. There's one key verb here that doesn't really play by the rules of the reflexive, and that is ir, to go. Its reflexive form is irse, and it means to leave. Kind of the opposite. Yo voy a la oficina means I go to the office, and me voy de la oficina means I leave from the office. You can kind of think of it as I go from the office, but we actually translate it. We translate it into English as I leave. There are a few other verbs that have slight changes of meaning when they switch their infinitive forms in the reflexive, but none are different enough to worry about here. I just wanted to call that one out for you so you don't get tripped up in seeing that difference of translation. Step by step and inch by inch, we're getting there. So pat yourself on the back for making it to the more intermediate lessons. Now we're going to move on to simple adverbs, which is a great way to ease into some of the more challenging aspects of Spanish. Expressing most simple Spanish adverbs falls into two camps, adding mente to the end of feminine singular adjectives. So we take the adjective and put it into the feminine form, often with an e, a, at the end, or we can use the preposition con, which means with, before the singular form of the noun. Let's take a look at some examples. First, mente, which you can think of as the ly ending in English. So rápida, rápidamente, lenta, lentamente, fácil, fácilmente, and so on. Note that the adjective, if it has an accent, transfers that on to its adverb form as well. So in the previous example of rápida, rápidamente, you can see it keeps the accent. The others don't have an accent. We don't add one. We don't take them away. Just transfer it right over. If that ever trips you up, there's a handy fail safe, which is using the other format of adjectives, or adverbs rather, the con plus noun format. This can be used if you're having trouble recalling or spelling the feminine version of an adjective, or simply because some are like, uh, can be really awkward when you're following the mente rule. So pacientemente means patiently, but we can also say con paciencia, respeto, I can't even read these, respetuosamente, con respeto, con inteligencia, con dulzura, con frecuencia. The mente forms, while completely valid and you can use them, are very long and you might prefer to use the con version. As we mentioned earlier, these two rules cover most simple adverbs, but not all. Some adverbs simply don't have a pattern such as nunca, which means never, and a veces, which means sometimes. So you'll have to commit those to memory. But again, we'll cover some of those in the next lesson and beyond, and you'll get plenty of practice. Now that you know some of the rules regarding adverbs, we're ready to disregard them as we move on to some of the loose-canon adverbs that don't play by the rules. With these, you'll simply have to commit them to memory, but through practice, they'll become second nature in no time. We'll start with adverbs of place here. Adverbs of place are used when answering the question where, as they provide information on location. In English, these would be words such as here, there, above, and below. Let's take a look. Here we have aquí, here, acá, over here, allí, allá, cerca, lejos, and a few more, delante, detrás, encima, debajo, dentro, fuera, adelante, atrás, arriba, abajo, adentro, afuera. As you've probably noticed, a few of these words are extremely similar, both in spelling and definition. We've tried to give you the best context, for example, detrás, meaning in rear as it applies more to placement, and atrás, meaning behind as it applies more to movement, but the words are highly interchangeable, so don't lose too much sleep over it. If you need to, rewind this video, pause, and look through the list. Otherwise, we'll keep going, and you'll get them through practice. With adverbs of place behind us, we can now move on to adverbs of time. You can think of these as answers to the questions when or how often. In English, these are words like now, tomorrow, or weekly. Let's take a look. Hoy, mañana, ayer, anoche, anteanoche, anteayer, ahora, luego, tarde, todavía, ya, nunca, siempre. There are a few other adverbs of time to make note of, but thankfully, these follow the mente suffix rule applied previously. Previamente, recientemente, actualmente, brevemente, diariamente, ocasionalmente. We're in the homestretch when it comes to adverbs, so hang in there. Now we move on to adverbs of quantity or adverbs of degree. These words can answer questions such as how much, muy, demasiado, mucho, poco, menos, más, tanto, bastante, algo, nada, todo. You can start to see that some of these words have double meanings based on context, such as algo, something or somewhat, or nada, nothing or not at all. Thankfully, the meanings are similar, and through practice you'll get the hang of the nuance of the words. While we're here, let's also take a look at some of the adverbs of manner, how you do something, that don't follow the adverbial rules. You're familiar with some that do, such as claramente or clearly, but the following words are ones you'll just have to commit to memory, and they come up a lot, so you won't have a hard time with it. Bien means well, mal means badly or poorly, mejor, better, and peor, worse. The finish line is in sight! You've learned the rules that most adverbs follow, as well as adverbs of place, time, quantity, and manner, and now we're going to wrap things up with commonly used adverbial phrases. These phrases can help with context, as well as connotation, and can sometimes serve as a segue between thoughts. Let's take a look! A veces, sometimes, al final. In the end, a tiempo, on time, a la vez. At the same time, de verdad, really or honestly, por fin, finally. Al principio, in the beginning, en serio, really or seriously. De inmediato, immediately. De nuevo, start over. A menudo, often. De repente, suddenly. Alright, you'll get a chance to practice these next, but congratulations on navigating the many pockets of Spanish adverbs! You'll now be able to provide valuable context when communicating, such as time and place, as well as use handy phrases that ensure your message is as direct as possible. Por fin! So far, we've covered the present tense, present progressive, and past tense. Now, it's time to talk about the future. Here's the tricky bit. Spanish has two future tenses. The first is called the informal future, and it actually uses the present tense of the verb ir, to go, combined with another verb, rather than having its own special conjugation. This informal future is used far more often than its counterpart, which is called the simple future, so we'll focus on it first, and we'll circle back to the simple future later. Since we're using the present tense conjugations of ir, this method is really straightforward. You simply use the correct conjugation of ir, then you add a in between, and then the verb infinitive, the thing that you're going to do. So, ella va a correr. She is going to run. Voy a cocinar mañana. I'm going to cook tomorrow. You can think of it the same way we've used in English, right? Literally, I am going to do an action. In case you need to brush up on those conjugations for ir, here they are in this context. You can pause, take a look, review. And then go ahead and take a look at these examples of the informal future, and we'll get to practicing. El presidente va a hablar. President is going to speak. Ellos van a nadar. They're going to swim. Vamos a leer. We are going to read. OK, so now that we know how to use the informal future to express what we are going to do, let's learn how to conjugate verbs for the simple future. Keep in mind that the informal future, using ir plus a plus an infinitive, is used more often than the simple future, so when in doubt, default to the informal. You can think of the simple future as just a different way to say the same thing. For example, take a look at these two sentences in English. I'm going to eat the food. I will eat the food. There might be a slight difference in connotation, but they basically have the same meaning, right? The same is true of these two methods of expressing the future in Spanish. Let's add the Spanish translations to the previous example. Voy a comer la comida. I'm going to eat the food. Comeré la comida. I will eat the food. Not too crazy, right? Let's take a look at the endings for a simple future conjugation. Unlike the present and past tense, we simply add these endings to the end of the infinitive form of the verb, so we don't take off the er, ir, or ar ending. We just add these on. Oh, and these endings apply to all three regular verb groups, which makes it really easy for us. So, ar, er, ir, all the same. Pause, take a look, and then we'll look at some examples. Here's an example using the word estudiar. Estudiaré. Estudiarás. Estudiará. Estudiaremos. Estudiará. All right, let's practice and get some more experience with this. Now that we know how to use both the informal future and the simple future, we need to understand when we should use each one. Let's talk about the context for using these two different methods. You can think about the informal future as covering any action that's going to happen in a relatively near future. For example, voy a viajar a Japón el próximo mes. I'm going to travel to Japan next month. Él va a beber cerveza. He's going to drink beer. El estudiante va a estudiar español. The student is going to study Spanish. Essentially, if what you want to say in English begins with I'm going to, you can use the informal future. This is by far the more common way to express things that you're going to do in everyday life. The simple future, in contrast, is used for actions that will take place further in the future. Viajaré a Colombia el año que viene. I'll travel to Colombia next year. Después de la universidad, él será un doctor. After university, he'll be a doctor. The simple future is also used in cases where you want to express curiosity without asking a direct pointed question in the present tense. In English, these kinds of sentences can be translated in multiple ways, meaning essentially the same thing and having the same connotation of curiosity. Take a look at these examples of expressing curiosity with the simple future. ¿Quién será eso? Who could that be? I wonder who that is. ¿Dónde estarán los niños? Where could the children be? I wonder where the children are. The third and final primary use of the simple future is to talk about probability. ¿Ella estará estudiando? She's probably studying. Ellos comerán pescado. They probably eat fish. Keep in mind that there are other ways to express curiosity and probability using words like preguntarse, to wonder, and probablemente, probably. But is this one key use of the simple future that differentiates it from the informal future? We wanted to introduce it here. To review, the informal future is the more commonly used form and it generally refers to actions happening in the relatively near future. The simple future is used for events further out, as well as to express curiosity and probability regarding current situations and actions. We previously learned how to talk about completed definite actions in the past using the preterite form, but there's another form of past tense in Spanish called the imperfect. The imperfect is used for actions that occurred in the past but are either not seen as being completed or finished, or do not have a definite beginning and end. Let's take a look at the different uses for the imperfect tense with some practical examples. We'll talk about the conjugations of all these verbs throughout this unit, but this lesson is just using examples to illustrate the cases where we would use the imperfect. So don't worry if the conjugations look a little strange right now, they will all make sense soon. Things you used to do The imperfect tense is used to talk about past actions that were habitual or recurring, meaning that they happened more than once, most likely at a semi-regular interval. In English, this will often translate as something that someone used to do or would do in the past. Here are a few examples. Comíamos juntos cada día. We used to eat together every day. Hablábamos en la escuela. We used to talk in school. Past dates and times We also used the imperfect to speak about dates and times in the past. Eran las 11 de la noche. It was 11 at night. Era el 4 de julio. It was the 4th of July. It can also be used to talk about how old someone was at a point in the past. Yo tenía 10 años. I was 10 years old. Los elefantes tienen 3 años. The elephants were 3 years old. Now that we know when to use the imperfect, let's take a look at how to conjugate AR verbs for it. Here are the endings for the imperfect conjugation of AR verbs. Pause, take a look, and then we'll see them in context, which I think is way more helpful, for me at least. Here's an example using the word hablar. Hablaba Hablabas Hablaba Hablábamos Hablaba Conjugating ER and IR verbs looks a little different than the AR verb conjugation that we just learned, so you'll have to keep in mind going forward that, even though they're very different endings, both are for the imperfect form. Fortunately, as we've often seen before, both the ER and IR regular verb groups have the same endings in the imperfect. Pause, take a look. We'll see some examples. Here's an example using the word comer, to eat. Comía Comías Comía Comíamos Comía And one final example using an IR verb. Escribir Escribía Escribías Escribía Escribíamos Escribía As per usual, there are a few irregular verbs that don't quite follow the rules for conjugation in the imperfect, so we just have to memorize them. Fortunately, unlike most other conjugations, the imperfect only has three irregular verbs, which makes our job much easier. These three are IR, SER, and VER. Let's take a look at IR first. Yo iba Ibas Iba Íbamos Íba Note to not miss the accent over the I on the first person plural. Íbamos Now let's look at SER. This one's a little weird. SER becomes Era Eras Era Éramos Era Again, notice the accented E here on the nosotros form. And lastly, let's talk about VER. Don't forget about the accents in the middle of the word, on those I's. It becomes VEA VEAS VEA VEAMOS VEA The conditional tense is exactly what it sounds like. It gives us a way to talk about things that hypothetically would happen if a certain condition is met. Sometimes that condition is stated explicitly, for example, I would go to the movies if I had money, and sometimes it's not stated at all. I would be interested. In the most basic terms, you can think of the Spanish conditional tense as very similar to using would in English. For example, here are a couple basic uses of the conditional. Compraría ese libro, pero no tengo dinero. I would buy that book, but I don't have money. Me interesaría aprender más sobre México. I would be interested in learning more about Mexico. Similar to the simple future tense, to conjugate the conditional tense, we add the corresponding endings to the infinitive form of the verb. In other words, no need to drop the ar, er, or ir up, and all three verb groups have the same endings. Here are the endings for the conditional tense. Go ahead, pause, take a look, then we'll see some examples. All right, here's an example using estudiar. Estudiaría. Estudiarías. Estudiaría. Estudiaríamos. Estudiaría. And one more using ser, to be, before we get to practicing. Sería. Serías. Sería. Seríamos. Sería. As with most other tenses, there are a few key verbs that are irregular in the conditional. In this case, the endings that we've learned stay the same, while the infinitive changes. I know, it's weird. These irregular conjugations fit neatly into two groups, with two left over, so let's take a look at these one at a time. We'll cover the first group in this lesson. In the first group, we simply remove the last vowel in the verb, and add the proper conditional ending. For example, saber, to know, would become sabría in the first and third person. Let's take a look at each conjugation for saber, before looking at the other verbs in this group. We get sabría, sabrías, sabría, sabriamos, and sabría. Here are all the verbs in this first group. Saber, poder, caber, haber. And they all follow that same rule. Let's practice this before moving on to the rest. In the second group of irregular verbs, we replace the final vowel in the infinitive with ti, and we add the correct ending. So for example, salir, to leave, would become sabría in the first and third person. Let's look at the full conjugation chart for salir. Sabría, sabrías, sabría, sabriamos, sabría. And here are all the verbs in this group. Salir, poner, tener, venir, valer. The last two irregular verbs that are important to know are hacer and decir. These don't fit nicely into the other groups, so we'll just have to memorize how they work. For hacer, the infinitive simply becomes ha, and then we add the correct ending. Haría, harías, haría, haríamos, haría. Decir is a similar story. The infinitive changes to di, and then we tag on the proper ending. Diría, dirías, diría, diríamos, diría. The past participle is a fairly simple and quite useful verb form. It's something you likely use every day in English, though the name might sound unfamiliar. For this lesson, we'll be talking about its use as an adjective, and later in the unit, we'll dive into how it can be combined with another verb to create the perfect tense. In English, you can think of the past participle as the ed form of a verb, as it's often conjugated by adding ed or d to the end of a verb in English. For example, constructed, brushed, opened, and closed are all past participles. Of course, English being English, there are almost more exceptions than rules, as some more examples will illustrate. Written, driven, broken, seen, built. Though some of these conjugations are the same as the regular past tense, particularly the ed ones, the past participle is distinct from the past tense. For example, saw vs. seen, wrote vs. written. To conjugate the past participle in Spanish, we remove the infinitive ending, and add adl to ar verbs, or ido to er and ir verbs. Here's a few examples. Cerrar becomes cerrado. Construir, construido. So, close and closed. Build becomes built. Alone, a past participle can be used as an adjective. For example, el restaurante está cerrado. The restaurant is closed. La casa está terminada. The house is finished. El juguete perdido. The lost toy. Just like all other adjectives, the past participle has to match up to the noun that it's modifying or describing, in both gender and plurality. El restaurante está cerrado. La ventana está cerrada. The window is closed vs. the restaurant is closed. Los cines están cerrados. The movie theaters are closed. Las puertas están cerradas. The doors are closed. Remember that using the past participle as an adjective is just one of several uses that we'll discuss throughout this unit, but let's practice. As per usual, there are a number of important verbs that are irregular in the past participle. Let's look at a few. As usual, there are a number of important verbs that are irregular in the past participle. Let's look at a few of the ones you'll see most often. Abrir becomes abierto. Cubrir, cubierto. Decir, dicho. Escribir, escrito. Hacer, hecho. Ver, visto. Romper, roto. Morir, muerto. Volver, vuelto. There aren't any solid rules around forming these irregular past participles, so they're just ones we'll have to memorize. Don't worry, we'll see them quite a bit as we practice. This use is less common, just like in English, but we can also use the verb ser plus the past participle to express something in the passive voice. For example, Las palabras son entendidas. The words are understood. La comida fue descubierto. The food was discovered. And if you'd like to talk about who performed an action using the passive voice, you can add in the word por, which in this case doesn't mean for, it means by. El libro fue escrito por el autor. The book was written by the author. La tarea es realizada por el estudiante. The homework is done by the student. Obviously, this is an awkward way to speak, but it's important to make sure we can understand it when we hear it, and if you need it. Let's practice and then move on to more useful things. In Spanish, we can combine the verb haber, to have, with the past participle to create the perfect tenses. In this lesson, we'll talk about the present perfect. This should look familiar in English, as we use the perfect tense to talk about actions that are fully completed. In this case, we're talking about a state that refers to the present, to right now. I have eaten the candy. The student has studied for her test. The kids have played that game. The present perfect functions exactly the same in Spanish. He comido los dosis. I have eaten the candy. El estudiante ha estudiado para el examen. The student has studied for the test. Los niños han jugado ese juego. The kids have played that game. Since we already know how to use the past participle, all we need to do is learn how to conjugate haber. It becomes e, as, a, hemos, an. As per usual, because each conjugation is unique, we can generally leave off the pronoun before the verb. So we already know that the present perfect is referring to an action that is complete right now. But what about an action that was already complete at some point in the past that we want to talk about? That's where the past perfect comes in. Just like the present perfect, the past perfect uses the verb haber plus the past participle. So all we have to do is learn the past tense conjugation for haber. Había, habías, había, habíamos, había. Here are the same examples from the previous lesson, just converted to use the past perfect. Había comido los dosis. I had eaten the candy. El estudiante había estudiado para el examen. The student has studied for the test. Los niños habían jugado ese juego. The kids had played that game. And here are a couple more examples for the road. Habíamos corrido lejos. We had run far. Habían pedido café. They had ordered coffee. This unit is all about the subjunctive. With the subjunctive, we are leaving the comfort of the tense and venturing into the unknown world of the mood. Okay, it's not that unknown. We technically have subjunctive in English too, and it'll sound pretty familiar to you as you start working with it. We'll try to keep it simple. First of all, what's the difference between a tense and a mood? At the most basic level, a tense lets us know when something is taking place. Past, present, future, ongoing, etc. While a mood expresses how the speaker feels about an action. We've been using only one mood up to this point. Indicative. Indicative mood is used to report or declare something that is objective or certain, as well as ask questions. It's the most commonly used mood and should be your default. For example, yo sé que eres estudiante. I know that you're a student. ¿Quieres ir al cine? Do you want to go to the movie theater? In contrast, the subjunctive mood is used for subjectivity. Anything that's not certain or objective. This includes things like desires, opinions, and of course, uncertainty. Espero que él hable inglés. I hope that he speaks English. Ella quiere que su hijo la llame. She wants her son to call her. So, when deciding whether to use indicative or the subjunctive, you can think of it in very simple terms. Certainty and objectivity, use the indicative. If you're uncertain or there's subjectivity, then it's the subjunctive. That's the main gist of it. But of course, we'll give you some examples throughout this unit of when exactly you should use the subjunctive. Broadly, the subjunctive fits into these situations. Desire, doubt, uncompleted actions, and impersonal opinions. First things first, let's learn how to conjugate the subjunctive and use it to express our desires.