Complete Spanish

Track 84

1. The "go verbs" as a group Overview

The course now tidies up the irregular verbs, and the first group is the ones taking -go instead of -o for the "I" form.

tener → tengo
to have
venir → vengo
to come
salir → salgo
to leave
poner → pongo
to put
decir → digo
to say
hacer → hago
to do, to make
oír → oigo
to hear
traer → traigo
to bring

The -go appears only in the "I" form. Everything else is built normally: tiene, tienes, tienen, tenemos.

2. In the mood tense, -go becomes -ga Rule

Rather than switching vowels like other verbs, these switch the -go to -ga. And unlike the present, that form now covers everybody.

tengo → tenga  ·  vengo → venga

Quiero que vengas · Quiero que lo traigas · No quiero que me distraigas

A good hook: in Spain you hear venga, venga constantly, meaning come on. Hanging up the phone you may hear a whole run of venga vale. That venga is exactly this -go to -ga change.

Answering the phone in Spain you may also hear diga or dígame, tell me. The mood tense on its own is an order, and being positive, the me goes on the end.

3. traer is -tract Pattern

Like tener being -tain and poner being -pose, traer hides inside English verbs as -tract.

extraer
to extract
atraer
to attract
contraer
to contract
distraer
to distract

The irregularity generalises: distraigo, I distract, or me distraigo, I get distracted. Note traer takes an extra i in that form.

4. Older languages carry more irregularity Concept

Spanish, being effectively modern Latin, is quite prone to it. But the irregularities can be made sense of within themselves, which is why they group together.

That is the approach for the rest of the course: rather than meeting irregular verbs one at a time as they appear, they get organised into groups that behave alike.

5. Half the course was method Method

Worth recording as the course starts to wrap up. Half the point has been content, teaching you Spanish. The other half has been how to manage it: how to think about the information, how to relate to it, how to find things you think you have forgotten.

Listening actively is how you refresh whatever needs refreshing. In a song or a film, you may catch only the verb endings at first, and identifying what an ending means is the important bit.

6. New vocabulary Vocabulary

oír
to hear
traer
to bring
vale
okay (used in Spain)