Topic:
Some verbs in the preterite tense need spelling changes to stay consistent with the pronunciation rules of Spanish.
Spelling Changes in the Preterite
In Unit 7 we saw verbs that required spelling changes in the present tense, so this idea should be familiar.
Although there are many verbs in this group, they are pretty easy to manage because the conjugations still sound like regular verbs.
They are just spelled slightly differently. Let me explain by looking at some specifics.
Verbs that End in -gar
Take pagar
for example.
If we follow the normal preterite tense conjugation rule for the Yo form, we would end up with pagé.
Remember that when "g" is followed by "e", it becomes a soft "g" sound, like in gente.
We need to preserve the consonant sound from the stem, so we need to change the conjugated form.
How? Spanish has a simple solution. Add a silent "u" after the "g", and get pagué
instead.
Preterite Conjugation of pagar, meaning to pay
The difference is only in spelling. If you are speaking, it sounds just like the normal conjugation should.
Verbs that End in -car
Same chapter, different paragraph...
Verbs that end in -car have a hard "c" sound, which would change to a soft "c" if we did not revise the spelling in the Yo form.
Take buscar as an example.
The regular conjugation in the 1st person would yield buscé.
The final "c" is now followed by "e", switching it to a soft sound. We can't have that, so let's replace it with a "qu" with has the same sound as a hard "c". So we get busqué.
Preterite Conjugation of buscar, meaning to look for
Verbs that End in -zar
The last group in this lesson are verbs like organizar
, meaning to organize.
This is just a peculiarity of Spanish, where the letter "z" is never followed by an "e".
As a result, "z" gets changed to a "c" in the Yo form.
Preterite Conjugation of organizar
Verbs that end in -uir, -eer, -caer, -oír
These verbs need a change in the Él and Ellos forms, to avoid an awkward three-vowel sequence that Spanish doesn't like.
Consider distribuir
, meaning to distribute.
If we used a regular conjugation for He distributed, it would be distribuió.
These forms replace the final "i" with a "y" instead, to get distribuyó
.
Also note that the third person plural makes the same adjustment: distribuyeron
.
Preterite Conjugation of distribuir
Here is another of this type, the verb caer
which means to fall.
For the -eer, -caer, and -oír verbs, you will also see that they add accent marks over the "í" in most of the forms.
Preterite Conjugation of caer
And with that, you're off to practice.
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