Video explanation here
Let’s look at what an infinitive verb is in Spanish - you’ll see plenty of them when we look at the different tenses.
An infinitive is a verb in its original form, that’s not conjugated.
It has ‘to’ in front of it e.g ‘to swim’, ‘to play’, ‘to write’.
In Spanish, the infinite verbs only ever have these endings:
-AR, -IR and -ER.
e.j Hablar, Vivir and Comer
So there are only three types of verb endings in Spanish.
These verbs are conjugated in the different tenses and are either ‘regular’ verbs
or ‘irregular’ verbs, as you’ll soon see.
Infinitives can also be used as the subject of a sentence:
e.j Aprender español vale la pena
Learning Spanish is worth it
e.j Viajar por Latinoamérica es increíble
Travelling around Latin America
is incredible
Infinitives also always follow some verbs:
1) Querer (to want)
Quiero ir a la playa
I want to go to the beach
2) Necesitar (to need)
Necesitamos visitar nuestra abuela
We need to visit our Grandma
3) Poder (to be able to)
Pueden tocar la guitarra
They can (to) play the guitar
4) Esperar (to hope)
Espero ganar el premio gordo
I hope to win the jackpot
There’s also another nice construct I want to throw in here using the infinitive, that will really help your Spanish stand out to native speakers.
‘Al’ + infinitive
.
You can check out how that’s formed here.
—
So that’s a whistle stop tour of the infinitive chic@s.
You’ll see and hear it come up a lot in conversation.
As always, the more you practice the easier it becomes.
Make sure you check out the Verb Lab 🧪 as well - a free tool to help you practice conjugating the 100 most common verbs in Spanish.
Disfruta.
Un abrazo,
Harrison
Language for living, not just learning
P.S - If you have any preguntas (questions) my inbox is always open.
chatspanish.online 📧
