Quick answer
Trabajo en Madrid. ¿Dónde vives? Comemos a las dos.
I work in Madrid. Where do you live? We eat at two. Cut off the last two letters and add an ending — that is the whole system.
The words of this lesson
Three families, one move
Every Spanish verb in the dictionary ends in -ar, -er or -ir. To use it, you cut those two letters off and glue on an ending that says who is doing it. Take hablar: the stem is habl-, and the endings are -o, -as, -a, -amos, -áis, -an. So hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, habláis, hablan.
-er verbs swap the a for an e: como, comes, come, comemos, coméis, comen. -ir verbs are identical to -er except in the we and you-all forms: vivo, vives, vive, vivimos, vivís, viven. Learn -er properly and you get -ir nearly free.
Telling someone about your week
Now the pattern does real work. Trabajo en una oficina, vivo con dos amigos, como en casa a las dos, los sábados corro en el parque. Add siempre, a veces or nunca and you have a routine.
The Spanish present also covers the English "-ing" of the moment: ¿qué haces? means both "what do you do?" and "what are you doing?". There is a separate form for the second, but you do not need it yet — beginners reach for it far too early and it makes speech slower, not better.
Leave the pronoun out
Because the ending already names the person, Spanish drops yo, tú, él in normal speech: you say vivo en Sevilla, not yo vivo en Sevilla. Use the pronoun only to contrast — yo trabajo, ella estudia — or after ¿y tú?
There is also no helper verb. English needs "do" and "am" to build questions and negatives; Spanish just adds question marks or no: ¿trabajas hoy?, no trabajo hoy.
Where you are matters
Spain uses the <span class="es-inline">-áis / -éis / -ís</span> forms (habláis, coméis, vivís) for a group; Latin America uses the they-form instead (hablan, comen, viven). Argentina says <span class="es-inline">hablás, comés, vivís</span> for a single "you".
Memory trick
Cut off -ar, -er or -ir, then add the ending — and remember that -ir only differs from -er in "we" and "you all".
A short dialogue
Typical mistakes
Yo soy trabajando en Madrid.
Trabajo en Madrid.
The simple present already covers the English "-ing", and ser is never used to build it.
¿Haces tú vives aquí?
¿Vives aquí?
Spanish has no helper verb "do". The question is the plain present with question marks.
Nosotros vivemos en Sevilla.
Nosotros vivimos en Sevilla.
The we-form of an -ir verb keeps the i: vivimos, not vivemos, which would be the -er pattern.
Practice
Practise these the present tense
0/8 matched — tap a Spanish word, then its translation
Check yourself
What is the "we" form of vivir?