Imperative Irregular Ud.-Uds. Spanish Verb Conjugation

There are 3 sets of Spanish irregular verbs for Ud. and Uds. commands that follow certain patterns and rules. The key is to go over all the lessons in this section enough so these verbs become second nature to you - so you don’t have to think of the rule every time you try to conjugate the verb. With enough practice and repetition, you can get to the point where correct conjugation will just come out naturally.

First we’ll look at a group of 18 irregulars. With 15 of the 18 of these, to get the stem, you take the “yo” present tense form, then put on the opposite ending. For example, the “yo” present tense form of “to leave” is “salgo”, so you just take off the “o” and put on the opposite ending. Let’s take a look at the first 15 that follow this rule.

The rule of taking the “yo” form of the present tense conjugation to find the stem also applies to this second group of irregular verbs. These are stem-changing verb that you learned back in present tense. Let’s take a look at these:

Now take a look at charts of all of the irregulars you have learned up to this point that apply in this area.

Just take a minute to look at them and read through them to start becoming familiar with them. But don’t worry about memorizing them for now. We’ll go through plenty of practice with these in the following corresponding software lessons.

Now we’ll look at the third and final group of irregulars. They are only irregular in spelling. The first one is “pagar”. If I changed the “ar” to an “e”, it would be pronounced “page”. So, to make it so it’s pronounce “pague”, we have to put a “u” after the “g”. Something similar happens to the verb “practicar” which would become “practice”; so we have to add a “qu” for it to become “practique”. Finally is the verb “empezar”. Spanish has a rule that you can never have a “z-e” or “z-i", so it changes the “z” to a “c”.

Here’s a chart of irregulars to look at and become familiar with.

Spelling Changes

Finally, there are 2 verbs that are irregular in the fact that they need accents. The verb “dar” becomes “dé” with an accent to distinguish it from the proposition “de” which means “of from or about”. However, the Uds. version is regular and doesn’t have an accent. The final one is “estar” which needs an accent over the “e” in both the Ud. as well as the “Uds.” conjugation.

Spanish Review