50 Irregular Preterite Spanish Verbs You Want to Use Often

Are you ready to conquer irregular preterite Spanish verbs?

When you’re in the throws of mastering Spanish verbs, it may feel like one long-drawn, never-ending repetition of conjugation drills—and sometimes it has to be that way. But you can avoid becoming overwhelmed by the endless volume of conjugations (especially those you’re about to see in this blog post!) through a few tricks we’ll discuss.

Are you ready?

First, I’ll share with you the 50 most common irregular Spanish preterite verbs, which fall into one of six different categories. Second, we’ll cover how you can recognize important patterns that reduce the amount you’ll have to memorize. And finally, we’ll explore a set of tried-and-true tricks to improve your grammar proficiency faster. 

¡Vamos a aprender conjugaciones!

50 Most Common Irregular Preterite Spanish Verbs

As you look at the following verb charts, you’ll notice that most of the verbs change only slightly in almost imperceptible ways. In fact, many of these stem-changing irregular preterite Spanish verbs even trip up native speakers! So make sure you pat yourself on the back for the hard work you’re putting in to memorize these verbs and use them correctly. 

While it may be tempting to tackle all of the verbs in this blog post at once, give yourself the chance to absorb them one group at a time.  Or, focus on mastering only one or two verbs before moving on. As you listen to podcasts, songs, audiobooks or radio programs in Spanish, look out for the native usage of these irregular preterite Spanish verbs. What’s more, include them in your written and spoken Spanish as often as possible to keep up your practice. 

When Patterns Emerge

As you begin to study these irregular preterite Spanish verbs, you may notice certain consistent patterns by which you can group some sets of verbs. These patterns will help you easily remember the irregular forms. Three major patterns you should look out for are:

1. Verbs that have complete base changes in all conjugations do not take the normal accent marks found in preterite tenses
   
   Tener
   Correct: yo tuve, él tuvo
   *Incorrect: yo *tuvé, él *tuvó
   
   
2. Verbs with base changes in all conjugations often have an –e ending for the yo form, despite the vast majority being -ER and -IR verbs.
   
   Hacer
   Correct: yo hice
   *Incorrect: yo *hicí
   
   
3. Verbs with base changes in all conjugations usually use -ER and -IR endings for most conjugations, even if the verb is an -AR verb.
   
   Estar
   Correct: tú estuviste, nosotros estuvimos, ellos estuvieron
   *Incorrect: tú *estuvaste, nosotros *estuvamos, ellos *estuvaron
   

Irregular Preterite Spanish Verb Charts

Alright, let’s dive into the wonders of irregular preterite Spanish verbs!

1. Stem-changing Verbs

Just like there are stem-changing verbs in the simple present tense, the largest group of irregular preterite Spanish verbs includes small stem changes. In the following charts, look for the bolded letters that represent the change. 

There are a few different types of preterite stem changes, but for each verb, they only occur in the third-person (plus usted) conjugations. In other words, the conjugations are normal except for the usted, él, ella, ustedes, and ellos forms. 

Vowel Change: E to I

The first set of stem-changing verbs changes the –e- to –i- in the third-person preterite tense.

Vowel Change: O to U

Our second group is much smaller, and this one changes the –o- to –u-.

Vowel Change: Add -y-

This group of stem-changing verbs applies to verbs that end in -aer, -eer, oír, or -oer. The verb conjugations for usted, ustedes, él/ella, and ellos/ellas convert the -i- to -y- while the verbs with tú and nosotros use an irregular accent: -í-.

Pro Tip: Note that all singular verbs (caí, caíste, cayó) are two to three syllable verbs with two vowels side by side. 

Similar to the previous group that ends in -aer, -eer, oír, or -oer, concluir replaces -i- with -y- for él, ella, usted, and ustedes. However, it doesn’t make use of an extra accent mark like we saw with caíste and oímos, for example

Vowel Change: Omission of Accents

Remember that it’s not only the addition of tildes that makes a verb irregular, but also the omission of them. This group of stem-changing irregular preterite Spanish verbs does just that—it omits accented letters that are found in the infinitive. 

For example, reír and sonreír both change in the same way due to their identical base, reír. While using these verbs with usted, él, ella, ustedes, and ellos, simply remove the e and use the regular endings (-ió, -eron). 

2. Base with -uv-

In our second group of irregular preterite Spanish verbs, there is a complete change in the stem—and not only in a few conjugations, but in all of them. The base completely changes before adding preterite endings. 

Because of the base change, the verbs (even with regular preterite endings) don’t use any accent marks. 

Do you notice anything special about the conjugations for contener, detener, and retener? 

Yes, they look like the tener conjugations! 

Because these verbs contain the base tener, they are conjugated in the exact same way as tener. This actually makes your job of memorization much easier, because you only need to remember tener. Once you understand the tener form, you can quickly conjugate any verb that contains tener!

3. Base with -i-

Our next group is similar to the stem-changing verbs that we saw in the first section, except that these vowel changes occur in every single conjugation. Just like with the -uv- verbs in #2, the following verbs with an -i- in the base do not use the regular preterite accent marks.

These first few verbs follow a pattern like what we saw with tener. Focus on memorizing venir and then apply those endings to verbs that contain venir, like convenir and prevenir.

Hacer is a unique irregular verb. While it does have an -i- in the base, there is an additional change in the usted, él, and ella forms: the -c- changes to -z-! While this change may seem unnecessary, it’s actually done to maintain the soft “s” sound of the pronunciation. 

Like tener and venir, hacer forms the base of other verbs. Once you know the preterite conjugations of hacer, you can easily master verbs like deshacer and rehacer.

Our final verb whose base changes to -i- is unique in that two letters change, not one. The base of querer changes from quer- to quis-. This base is in all of the conjugations. 

4. Base with -u-

The following verbs each have a vowel that changes to -u-. Similar to querer, another letter changes as well. As you’ll see, the -u- is followed by -d-, -s-, or -p-. 

Take note that poder is the only verb in this group that uses -ud- and maintains the -d- from its original form. 

Additionally, poner uses -us-, and is essential to memorize because it’s the base for numerous other verbs like componer and proponer.

The only three verbs that have the -up- form are caber, haber, and saber. One way to remember them is to recognize that they’re the only verbs in this group that change -a- to -u-, whereas the other verbs change from -o- to -u-. 

As you learn the irregular form of haber, remember that this verb is incredibly special. It has two meanings: the auxiliary verb “to have” and “there is/there are.” If you want to say “there was” in singular or “there was” in plural, ONLY use hubo. 

The other forms of haber are used exclusively in compound verb structures, but aren’t common. 

5. Base with -j-

This group is important to memorize because it contains one of the most common verbs: decir. While the forms may seem strange, it’s crucial to practice them frequently because you’ll use decir in most of your Spanish conversations.

The first three verbs with -j- in the stem look similar:they all end in -ducir. And like all other verbs that have complete base changes, there are no accent marks.

Decir, apart from being a crucial part of written and spoken Spanish, also makes up the structure of other more complex verbs. Note that the -e- in decir also changes to -i-, making this a completely unique verb.

The last verb in our list that uses -j- is traer. This verb is similar to the other verbs in #5, except that it doesn’t end in -ir. 

6. Special Irregular Verbs

Of course, there are completely irregular verbs that don’t follow any particular pattern. Luckily, there are only four, and they are quite similar to one another.

For example, the preterite form of ir and ser are conjugated identically. Without an obvious difference, how do you know which verb is being used? The answer is context clues! Normally, the verb ir precedes a place, while ser precedes an adjective.

The last two irregular preterite Spanish verbs, dar and ver, have different endings for the infinitive form, but their preterite changes are exactly the same. 

Practice Makes Perfect!

50 irregular preterite Spanish verbs are a lot to memorize, so be sure to bookmark this blog post and come back for quick reference! By using the patterns and groups we’ve shared with you above, you can easily tackle the irregular preterite Spanish verbs in no time. Use these verbs as often as possible in both spoken and written Spanish, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes!

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Ashley Reid

Freelance Writer at Homeschool Spanish Academy

I have a B.A. in Linguistics and a passion for Spanish. I've lived in Latin America for almost a decade. I'm a freelance writer and ESL teacher, as well as a loving mom and wife. In my free time, I dabble in art and music.

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