Border Lines

It is important that anyone studying Spanish pays special attention to irregular Spanish verbs and especially Querer and it’s conjugations as it is used often.Querer is frequently used as the Spanish equivalent to the English verb ‘to want’, but it can be used as an alternative to the Spanish verb amar, which means ‘to love’.

Querer is a stem changing verb which is a verb that is often referred to as a ‘regular’ irregular verb and this is because the verb endings are consistent to those of a regular verb, with the exception being the preterite. In querer’s case the ‘e’ in the verb stem alters into ‘ie’ when it is conjugated in a few tenses and in some of the other tenses the short sounding and single ‘r’ will become a rolling double ‘rr’.

Although, the most extreme transformation is when the verb is conjugated in the preterite, the stem ‘quer-’ changing to ‘quis-’ for no apparent reason!

As with any Spanish verb conjugation the obvious place to start is with the Present tense. The verb endings, as mentioned, mimic the formation of regular -er verbs, but the stem changes subtly. This specific change in  the stem also happens in the present tense of the Subjunctive and the Imperative.

Querer Present Tense

yo quiero – I want
tú quieres – you want
usted/él/ella quiere – you, he or she wants
nosotros/as queremos – we want
vosotros/as queréis – you (all) want
ustedes/ellos/ellas quieren – you (all), they want

It is worth noting that the first and second person plural stem does not change, and this is also the case for the other tenses that are affected by this irregularity.

Preterite Tense Conjugation

The preterite is a highly irregular tense for many verbs and querer is no exception, with the stem transforms drastically as detailed here and also the regular -er endings for yo and él/usted are replaced by -e and -o respectively:

yo quise – I wanted
tú quisiste – you wanted
usted/él/ella quiso – you, he or she wanted
nosotros/as quisimos – we wanted
vosotros/as quisisteis – you (all) wanted
ustedes/ellos/ellas quisieron – you (all), they wanted

Unlike the present tense the irregularity covers all persons. This specific irregularity is also found in the Subjunctive Imperfect and Future conjugations and again applies to all forms.

Future Tense Conjugation

The last irregularity is encountered when using querer and is when the single -r changes into the rolling -rr and this occurs when the verb is put into the Conditional and Future Tenses, once again this irregularity covers all conjugations in both of these tenses.

yo querré – I will want
tú querrás – you will want
usted/él/ella querrá – you, he or she will want
nosotros/as querremos – we will want
vosotros/as querréis – you (all) will want
ustedes/ellos/ellas querrán – you (all), they will want

It is obvious that querer will take some effort learning getting to know but with by using a Spanish verb conjugator which improves verb training there is no reason why querer can’t be learned fast and used confidently.

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