Useful irregular verbs: ser, estar, tener, ir and hacer

What you’ll learn

• Recognize frequent irregular present forms.
• Use tener for possession and common physical needs.
• Use ir a with a destination and hacer for familiar activities.

Learn useful forms together

Frequent verbs are not always regular. You already know soy/eres/es/somos/sois/son and estoy/estás/está/estamos/estáis/están. Tener adds tengo, tienes, tiene, tenemos, tenéis, tienen. Practise these forms in phrases that say something about a real person, rather than as a list of endings detached from meaning.

Tener means to have, but it also appears where English uses be. Tengo hambre means I am hungry, and tengo veinte años gives an age. Tengo frío describes feeling cold. These are noun phrases after tener, so do not change hambre or frío into a verb to imitate the English sentence.

Go somewhere and do something

Ir has the forms voy, vas, va, vamos, vais and van. Use a before a destination: Voy a casa. When a is followed by the masculine article el, combine them as al: Vamos al mercado. Hacer has hago, haces, hace, hacemos, hacéis and hacen. Its first-person form is irregular even though several other present forms look regular.

Choose a verb for its meaning as well as its shape. ¿Qué haces? asks what you do or are doing; ¿Adónde vas? asks where you are going. Hacer appears in activity expressions such as hacer ejercicio and weather expressions such as hace calor. Learn these phrases as units and revisit them in daily-life stories.

Useful vocabulary

tener hambre

to be hungry

hacer ejercicio

to exercise

ir a casa

to go home

Common mistakes

• Say tengo hambre, not soy hambre.
• Use voy rather than a regular-looking first-person form of ir.
• Combine a + el as al when el is the article.

Keep these ideas

• Keep frequent irregular forms in useful phrases.
• Tener expresses possession, age and several physical needs.
• Ir a introduces a destination; hago is the yo form of hacer.

Use it in your life

Write a character's plan in three sentences: something they have, where they go and what they do there.

Read it in context

Look for this lesson’s ideas in a complete Spanish story. Read the passage first, then use its translations to check your understanding.