You're in a Mexican supermarket, and the man in front of you is speaking with the cashier, but not in Spanish. The cashier clearly wants to help the man, but they can't understand each other.Flustered, the cashier turns to you for help and asks:¿Qué idiomas hablas?And by the end of this post, you'll be able to understand (and answer) that question! Plus, we'll be taking a deeper look at the present tense in Spanish.Ready? Let's go!

Vocabulary for Languages in Spanish

Now that we know how to introduce ourselves, let’s continue by learning to discuss what languages we speak.Use this question to start a conversation about languages in Spanish:

¿Qué idiomas hablas? (What languages do you speak?)How do we respond to that question? Let's find out.

Yo hablo español (I speak Spanish)

Yo hablo inglés (I speak English)

Let's pick these new phrases apart. Idiomas is the word for "languages", qué means "what" and the word hablas means "you speak". Hablo means "I speak", and comes from the same verb, hablar (to speak).(A quick note: the h at the beginning of the word hablar is silent! H is always silent in Spanish, except when it's part of ch, which makes the same sound as in the English word champion.)Of course, you might also know other languages than Spanish or English! Here are a few more that you might want to talk about:

francés (French)

alemán (German)

italiano (Italian)

portugués (Portuguese)

chino (Chinese)

If you're curious about the accents on the vowels, and whether they change a word's pronunciation. The answer is... yes.In Spanish, the acute accent ( ´ ) shows which syllable should be stressed in a word. So if you see inglés, you know you need to pronounce it "ing-LES". Accents also help differentiate between words with the same spelling, but we'll cover that more in future posts.For now, let's focus on the present.

How to Form the Present Tense in Spanish

We caught a glimpse of it earlier, but it's time to learn why hablo means "I speak" and hablas means "you speak".They are both from the same verb, hablar (to speak).There are three types of verb in Spanish, each with a different ending. The three endings are:

-ar (for example: hablar, to speak)

-er (for example: comer, to eat)

-ir (for example: venir, to come)

Forming the present tense is slightly different for each of the three verb types, so today we'll focus only on -ar verbs. We'll use hablar as an example, since we're already learning this word!First, let’s find the stem of the verb. You do this by removing the -ar, -er or -ir. For hablar, we remove the -ar:

Hablar - ar = habl

This remainder (habl-) is called the stem of the verb. You'll use it to create all the tenses.Then, depending on what we want to say, we add another ending. Here they are:

Present tense -ar verb: hablar (to speak)

Yo habloI speakTu hablasYou speakÉl/ella/Usted hablaHe/she/you (polite) speaksNosotros/nosotras hablamosWe (male/female) speakVosotros/vosotras habláisYou (m. plural/f. plural) speakEllos/ellas/Ustedes hablan

They speak (m. pl./ f. pl.)/You speak (polite)

A quick reminder from our last post: the pronouns (such as yo and tú) are optional. Because there's a different verb ending for all the different people (I, you, he/she, etc.), you can normally figure out the meaning from the verb alone. It's strange to English speakers, but it's perfectly normal in Spanish.So now, if someone asks you ¿qué idiomas hablas? you can respond and tell them which languages you speak!Most importantly, you can say yo hablo español with pride - because you do!¡Adiós!