Lesson 11: -GO and -JO Verbs in the Present

Here we are going to look at another group that doesn't quite play by the rules. Before, we saw the stems change, but now we're going to see the ending change—only for the yo form though! We can call these the ‑GO verbs or yo go verbs because here, with a verb like poner (to put) or salir (to leave or to go out) we might expect to see the yo form be pono or salo. But no! The yo ending for these (and several other verbs) will actually be ‑GO. And every other form is normal! Phew. Check out these examples:

But wait, there's more! The ‑GO verbs have some crossovers with the stem-changing verbs. Check out tener (to have) and decir (to say). Their stems change like in the previous lesson, AND they have ‑GO endings in their yo forms:

Tener most directly means "to have":

Age

Spanish uses tener, rather than ser or estar, to express age:

Common Expressions with Tener

Spanish also uses tener in several common expressions that use "to be" in English:

These are best learned as complete Spanish expressions rather than translated word by word.

Tener que + Infinitive

Tener que + infinitive means "to have to" do something:

Here are some other ‑GO verbs you'll meet along the way as you work through VerbMaster's Master Class:

If you look carefully, you might notice that there are some prefixes on this list - like how obtener is OB + TENER or how suponer is SU + PONER. These prefixed forms will take on the same changes as the original verb; so obtener and mantener will be conjugated just like tener, and suponer will be conjugated just like poner, both of which we've looked at above. In other words, you're learning to conjugate multiple verbs at once!

A second group of verbs that needs our attention is another irregular yo form. Just like the ‑GO verbs, learning this group will help you now and again further down your road to becoming a VerbMaster. Here, the ‑G‑ becomes a ‑J‑. This protects the soft sound from the infinitive when the verb is conjugated. These tend to be infinitives that end in a vowel + ‑GER or ‑GIR.