Chapter 27 · B1
El Pretérito Indefinido (Preterite): Irregular Verbs
Might help first: Ch. 26 — El Pretérito Indefinido (Preterite): Regular Verbs, Ch. 23 — Present Tense: Stem-Changing & Irregular Verbs (a suggestion, never a requirement)
Chapter 26 covered every preterite verb built on a fully predictable stem — the completed-past-action meaning and the regular endings taught there apply to everything in this chapter too, so this chapter doesn’t re-teach either one. What it covers instead is the verbs that don’t follow that stem pattern at all, and there’s no way around the fact that there are a lot of them — worse, they include some of the most common verbs in the language: tener, hacer, decir, poder, querer, venir, poner, saber, ir, ser, dar, ver. You will use these constantly, which is exactly why they’re irregular in the first place — the most frequent verbs in any language tend to resist regularization over centuries of everyday use. The good news, as with Chapter 23’s present-tense irregulars, is that these aren’t a random alphabetical pile: most of them share one unifying trick, and once you see it, you’re not memorizing twelve separate paradigms — you’re memorizing twelve stems and one pattern.
Core Pattern: One Irregular Stem, One Shared Ending Set
The “strong” preterite: a new stem, a new set of endings
A2Most irregular preterite verbs replace the infinitive stem with a completely different irregular stem, and then — this is the key insight — attach one shared set of endings that isn’t the regular set from Chapter 26 at all:
Compare these endings — -e, -iste, -o, -imos, -isteis, -ieron — to the regular ones from Chapter 26: no accent marks anywhere, yo ends in plain -e (not -í), and él/ella/usted ends in plain -o (not -ió). This isn’t a coincidence specific to tener — every verb in this family uses this exact same ending set once you’ve swapped in its irregular stem.
Notice there’s no boot outline drawn around this table, for the same reason Chapter 23 found no boot around ir’s present tense: the boot shape only appears when nosotros/vosotros form a “regular” baseline that the other four forms deviate from. Here, all six forms are built from the same irregular stem tuv- — nosotros and vosotros are exactly as irregular as everywhere else in the paradigm, so there’s no unaffected shape left to outline. This is the pattern to expect for nearly every verb in this chapter: the irregularity in the preterite’s “strong” stems is spread evenly across all six cells, not clustered into four the way a present-tense stem-change is.
Tuve una reunión muy larga esta mañana.
I had a very long meeting this morning.
¿Tuviste tiempo de terminar el informe?
Did you have time to finish the report?
Building Out: The Irregular Stem Families
The u-stem group
A2The largest cluster of irregular stems all insert a u and take exactly the ending set introduced above:
| Infinitive | Stem | yo | él/ella/usted |
|---|---|---|---|
| tener (to have) | tuv- | tuve | tuvo |
| estar (to be) | estuv- | estuve | estuvo |
| andar (to walk) | anduv- | anduve | anduvo |
| poder (to be able to) | pud- | pude | pudo |
| poner (to put) | pus- | puse | puso |
| saber (to know) | sup- | supe | supo |
| caber (to fit) | cup- | cupe | cupo |
No pude llegar a tiempo.
I couldn't get there on time.
Estuvimos en Barcelona la semana pasada.
We were in Barcelona last week.
Two close relatives use the same ending set with an i instead of a u: querer → quise, quisiste, quiso, quisimos, quisisteis, quisieron, and venir → vine, viniste, vino, vinimos, vinisteis, vinieron.
Quisimos ayudar, pero ya era tarde.
We wanted to help, but it was already too late.
The j-stem group: decir, traer, and the -ducir verbs
B1A related family swaps in a stem ending in j — and that single consonant forces one further tweak: where the regular ending would be -ieron, the i drops, giving -eron instead.
Traer follows the identical shape: traje, trajiste, trajo, trajimos, trajisteis, trajeron. The same j-stem, same -eron ending, extends to every verb ending in -ducir: conducir → conduje, condujiste, condujo, condujimos, condujisteis, condujeron, and identically for traducir (traduje…), producir (produje…), and reducir (reduje…).
Le dije la verdad.
I told him/her the truth.
Trajeron comida para todos.
They brought food for everyone.
El taxista nos condujo hasta el aeropuerto.
The taxi driver drove us to the airport.
Hacer’s own spelling twist: hice, hiciste, hizo
A2Hacer takes the same -e, -iste, -o, -imos, -isteis, -ieron ending set as the u-stem group, with its own one-letter spelling wrinkle in the él/ella/usted form:
Hice la cena para toda la familia.
I made dinner for the whole family.
¿Qué hizo con el dinero?
What did he/she do with the money?
Nuance, Exceptions & Contrast
Ir and ser: identical forms, told apart only by context
B1Two completely unrelated verbs — ir (to go) and ser (to be) — share exactly the same preterite forms. This isn’t a coincidence to untangle; it’s simply a fact of Spanish you memorize once:
As with tuve and dije above, every cell here is built from the same irregular stem, so there’s no boot outline to draw — this table is simply a plain grid of six forms, all equally irregular.
Fui al mercado esta mañana.
I went to the market this morning.
Fui profesor durante diez años.
I was a teacher for ten years.
Dar and ver: borrowing -er/-ir endings, minus the accents
B1Dar is an -ar verb and ver is an -er verb, but neither uses its own regular family’s endings in the preterite — both borrow the -í/-iste/-ió/-imos/-isteis/-ieron shape instead, and both drop every accent mark that shape would normally carry:
Le di el regalo ayer.
I gave him/her the gift yesterday.
Vimos la película el sábado.
We watched the movie on Saturday.
-IR stem-changing verbs: the preterite’s own vowel shift
B1Chapter 23 taught the present-tense boot pattern for stem-changing verbs, and flagged that -ir stem changers carry a second, related change into the preterite — this is that promised section. Unlike the -ar/-er stem changers from Chapter 26, which drop their stem change completely in the preterite, -ir stem changers keep a smaller version of it — but only in the él/ella/usted and ellos/ellas/ustedes forms:
This is a third distinct shape, worth holding apart from the other two you’ve now seen: it’s not the classic four-cell boot from Chapter 23’s present tense (yo/tú/él/ellos), and it’s not the all-six-cells irregularity of tuve or fui above — it’s just two cells, both third-person, both singular and plural. The regular endings, regular accents, and regular yo/tú/nosotros/vosotros forms from Chapter 26 all still apply; only él/ella/usted and ellos/ellas/ustedes swap in the shifted vowel.
The vowel the form shifts to follows the same present-tense family it came from, one notch simplified: present-tense e→ie becomes preterite e→i, present-tense e→i stays e→i, and present-tense o→ue becomes preterite o→u.
El camarero nos sirvió la cena.
The waiter served us dinner.
Mi abuelo murió el año pasado.
My grandfather died last year.
Other common members: sentir → sintió, sintieron; preferir → prefirió, prefirieron; seguir → siguió, siguieron; repetir → repitió, repitieron; vestir(se) → (se) vistió, vistieron; elegir → eligió, eligieron; corregir → corrigió, corrigieron.
A note on overcorrection: don’t add what doesn’t belong
B1Once the regular accent rules from Chapter 26 are second nature, a predictable new mistake appears: adding an accent mark, or a regular ending, to a verb from this chapter that needs neither.
Tuve que salir temprano, no tuvé.
I had to leave early.
The fix is the same one that closed this chapter’s Core Pattern section: once you’ve recognized a verb as belonging to one of the irregular stem families above, the shared -e/-iste/-o/-imos/-isteis/-ieron (or -eron for j-stems) ending set applies exactly as shown, with no accent marks and no exceptions layered back in from the regular pattern.
Bringing It Together
Ayer fuimos al cine. Tuve que hacer cola porque no pude comprar las entradas por internet, pero al final las conseguí a tiempo. Mi hermana pidió palomitas, yo no dije nada porque ya había comido, y vimos la película sin problemas.
Yesterday we went to the movies. I had to wait in line because I couldn't buy the tickets online, but I got them in time in the end. My sister ordered popcorn, I didn't say anything because I'd already eaten, and we watched the movie without any problems.
Faced with a verb you suspect is irregular in the preterite, check it against this chapter’s families in order: is it ir or ser (fui…), dar or ver (di/vi…)? Does it belong to one of the u-stem, i-stem, or j-stem families with the shared strong-preterite endings? Is it hacer, with its lone c→z swap? Or is it an -ir verb that already stem-changes in the present — in which case, expect the smaller two-cell vowel shift in the third person only. Anything left over after all of that is simply regular, and Chapter 26’s pattern covers it completely.
Where to Go Next
- Chapter 26, El Pretérito Indefinido: Regular Verbs — the core meaning and the regular endings this chapter’s irregular forms depart from.
- Chapter 23, Present Tense: Stem-Changing & Irregular Verbs — many of this chapter’s stems (tuve, hice, dije…) are irregular yo-forms or fully irregular verbs reshaped from their present-tense counterparts taught there.
- Chapter 25, Present Progressive — the -ir stem-change family’s gerund forms (pidiendo, durmiendo) share the same vowel shift taught above.
- Chapter 28, El Pretérito Imperfecto — the other simple past tense, with only three truly irregular verbs of its own (a useful contrast to this chapter’s long list).
- Chapter 29, Preterite vs. Imperfect: Choosing the Right Past — the decision framework for choosing between the preterite taught across this chapter and Chapter 26, and the imperfect.
- Chapter 36, Commands — several of this chapter’s irregular stems (di, haz, pon, ten, ven, sé) resurface as irregular imperative forms.
Ready to practice?
12 exercises · multiple-choice, fill-blank, conjugation-grid…