Verb tenses

The six tenses used across this site, each with the same sentence carried through it: Tú sufres con el calor — “You suffer in the heat.”

sufrir is a fully regular -ir verb, so these forms are the class pattern rather than facts about this verb. For the full six-person paradigm of each tense see sufrir; for why the endings work this way, see verb classes.

Spanish con el calor is literally “with the heat”. English prefers “in the heat”, and the literal column below is kept only to show where the two languages part.

Presente simple — simple present

States what is true now, what is habitual, or what happens as a rule. It carries no sense of the action being under way at this moment.

Presente continuo — present progressive

States what is under way right now. Built from estar plus the gerundio, so both parts change: estar takes the person, the main verb stays in -iendo.

Futuro simple — simple future

States what will happen. The endings attach to the whole infinitive rather than to a stripped stem, so -ar, -er, and -ir verbs share one set of future endings.

Futuro perifrástico — periphrastic (“going to”) future

States what is going to happen, usually soon. It is the ordinary spoken future; the futuro simple is the more formal or more distant of the two.

Pretérito indefinido — preterite (simple past)

States a past action or situation seen as finished — bounded, over, treated as a single completed event.

Pretérito imperfecto — imperfect

States a past action or situation seen as unbounded — habitual, repeated, or still in progress at the time being described. English renders it as “used to” or “was -ing”.

Comparación rápida