4.14: Gramática. Los verbos con cambio de raíz (o-ue)

Remember that infinitives, the dictionary form of verbs, end in -ar, -er, or -ir in Spanish; the part of the verb that remains when you remove the infinitive ending is called the verb’s stem. There are three categories of stem-changing verbs, which all follow a similar pattern of changing the last vowel of their stem in the conjugated forms where that vowel is stressed. The verb endings are the same ones that we’ve learned already, according to whether it’s an -ar, -er or -ir verb.

Notice that the stem vowel in the infinitive changes in all three singular forms, as well as the third-person plural, but not in the first- or second-person plural. That is to say that when the verb’s subject is yo, tú, él, ella, usted, ellos, ellas, or ustedes, then the stem vowel will change. But the stem vowel in the nosotros, nosotras, vosotros and vosotras forms is the same as the infinitive.

We’ll start with the verbs that change from o to ue. Here’s an example of an o-ue verb, followed by a list of verbs that are conjugated with this pattern: