that to us in exacting their revenge. Here’s the Pet?rito: Fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos and fueron. Think this is the end? No! Who ever said Spanish had to conjugate verbs using an infinitive that made sense?

We did not even get to the second past tense. In all of the entire Spanish language there are only three verbs that are irregular in the second past tense, called the imperfect or imperfecto de indicativo. You guessed it—IR is one of them! But the Spaniards could only come up in the imperfect with a fairly reasonable conjugation: iba, ibas, iba, ?bamos and iban. So, even they ran out of perfidious co

A. Learning Spanish Special Revenge Verb: IR

For students studying Spanish, hopefully, learning Spanish too, nothing is more frustrating than being hit squarely between the eyes at a Monday morning class with the two Spanish “special verbs of revenge”: IR and or SER. At RICA, we do exactly that, but we do not take the risk of doing so lightly. I never said learning Spanish would be free of physical risks and from historical revenge.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the Spaniards and I like their language—but let’s get real here: IR and SER are not just Spanish verbs, they are “revenge,” exacted against the English speaking people for the fate that befelled the Spanish Armada. If this is historically incorrect, so what? Like all good Americans, if I don’t agree with history, I just make it up. Now, back to the IR infinitive.

First, who ever heard of a stem of a verb with just one letter? “I.” My Spanish professors had the unmitigated gall, despite my repeated protests, to call IR an “I-R” verb. Where is Mark Twain when we really need him, as he would say: “IR is as different from other Spanish IR verbs as a lighting bug is from lighting.”

Let’s take a peak at the extent of this revenge by examining a few simple conjugations of IR: Present perfect or Presente de Indicativo: yo voy, t? vas, usted va, nosotros vamos and ustedes van. Note there is not a single “V” in IR. I must apologize to our little Georgia Peach. But, I already implied that it might get worse. Remember, we are doing the simple conjugations! I realize that to tell her that anything about IR is simple is to risk bodily harm, but I am a professor and protected by academic freedom.

Now, you’d think the Spaniards would leave well enough alone or at least show a little sympathy. No! They go and concoct up a past tense, which they call the Pret?rito that is even more dumbfounding. Not only do we English speakers have to learn to spell this word correctly (Pret?rito) with the correct accent mark, the Spaniards nailed us with even a more acerbic revenge by throwing in an accent mark just in case we failed to learn Spanish’s spelling and pronunciation rules!

B. Learning Spanish is Easy if You Forget English:

We then go from a “V,” which is not in the stem of IR to an “F,” which also is not in the IR stem. Of course, there is another fairly well known English word that begins with an “f,” so perhaps the Spaniards wanted to do that to us in exacting their revenge. Here’s the Pet?rito: Fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos and fueron. Think this is the end? No! Who ever said Spanish had to conjugate verbs using an infinitive that made sense?

We did not even get to the second past tense. In all of the entire Spanish language there are only three verbs that are irregular in the second past tense, called the imperfect or imperfecto de indicativo. You guessed it—IR is one of them! But the Spaniards could only come up in the imperfect with a fairly reasonable conjugation: iba, ibas, iba, ?bamos and iban. So, even they ran out of perfidious con

ainst the English speaking people for the fate that befelled the Spanish Armada. If this is historically incorrect, so what? Like all good Americans, if I don’t agree with history, I just make it up. Now, back to the IR infinitive.

First, who ever heard of a stem of a verb with just one letter? “I.” My Spanish professors had the unmitigated gall, despite my repeated protests, to call IR an “I-R” verb. Where is Mark Twain when we really need him, as he would say: “IR is as different from other Spanish IR verbs as a lighting bug is from lighting.”

Let’s take a peak at the extent of this revenge by examining a few simple conjugations of IR: Present perfect or Presente de Indicativo: yo voy, t? vas, usted va, nosotros vamos and ustedes van. Note there is not a single “V” in IR. I must apologize to our little Georgia Peach. But, I already implied that it might get worse. Remember, we are doing the simple conjugations! I realize that to tell her that anything about IR is simple is to risk bodily harm, but I am a professor and protected by academic freedom.

Now, you’d think the Spaniards would leave well enough alone or at least show a little sympathy. No! They go and concoct up a past tense, which they call the Pret?rito that is even more dumbfounding. Not only do we English speakers have to learn to spell this word correctly (Pret?rito) with the correct accent mark, the Spaniards nailed us with even a more acerbic revenge by throwing in an accent mark just in case we failed to learn Spanish’s spelling and pronunciation rules!

B. Learning Spanish is Easy if You Forget English:

We then go from a “V,” which is not in the stem of IR to an “F,” which also is not in the IR stem. Of course, there is another fairly well known English word that begins with an “f,” so perhaps the Spaniards wanted to do that to us in exacting their revenge. Here’s the Pet?rito: Fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos and fueron. Think this is the end? No! Who ever said Spanish had to conjugate verbs using an infinitive that made sense?

We did not even get to the second past tense. In all of the entire Spanish language there are only three verbs that are irregular in the second past tense, called the imperfect or imperfecto de indicativo. You guessed it—IR is one of them! But the Spaniards could only come up in the imperfect with a fairly reasonable conjugation: iba, ibas, iba, ?bamos and iban. So, even they ran out of perfidious co

xamining a few simple conjugations of IR: Present perfect or Presente de Indicativo: yo voy, t? vas, usted va, nosotros vamos and ustedes van. Note there is not a single “V” in IR. I must apologize to our little Georgia Peach. But, I already implied that it might get worse. Remember, we are doing the simple conjugations! I realize that to tell her that anything about IR is simple is to risk bodily harm, but I am a professor and protected by academic freedom.

Now, you’d think the Spaniards would leave well enough alone or at least show a little sympathy. No! They go and concoct up a past tense, which they call the Pret?rito that is even more dumbfounding. Not only do we English speakers have to learn to spell this word correctly (Pret?rito) with the correct accent mark, the Spaniards nailed us with even a more acerbic revenge by throwing in an accent mark just in case we failed to learn Spanish’s spelling and pronunciation rules!

B. Learning Spanish is Easy if You Forget English:

We then go from a “V,” which is not in the stem of IR to an “F,” which also is not in the IR stem. Of course, there is another fairly well known English word that begins with an “f,” so perhaps the Spaniards wanted to do that to us in exacting their revenge. Here’s the Pet?rito: Fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos and fueron. Think this is the end? No! Who ever said Spanish had to conjugate verbs using an infinitive that made sense?

We did not even get to the second past tense. In all of the entire Spanish language there are only three verbs that are irregular in the second past tense, called the imperfect or imperfecto de indicativo. You guessed it—IR is one of them! But the Spaniards could only come up in the imperfect with a fairly reasonable conjugation: iba, ibas, iba, ?bamos and iban. So, even they ran out of perfidious co

call the Pret?rito that is even more dumbfounding. Not only do we English speakers have to learn to spell this word correctly (Pret?rito) with the correct accent mark, the Spaniards nailed us with even a more acerbic revenge by throwing in an accent mark just in case we failed to learn Spanish’s spelling and pronunciation rules!

B. Learning Spanish is Easy if You Forget English:

We then go from a “V,” which is not in the stem of IR to an “F,” which also is not in the IR stem. Of course, there is another fairly well known English word that begins with an “f,” so perhaps the Spaniards wanted to do that to us in exacting their revenge. Here’s the Pet?rito: Fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos and fueron. Think this is the end? No! Who ever said Spanish had to conjugate verbs using an infinitive that made sense?

We did not even get to the second past tense. In all of the entire Spanish language there are only three verbs that are irregular in the second past tense, called the imperfect or imperfecto de indicativo. You guessed it—IR is one of them! But the Spaniards could only come up in the imperfect with a fairly reasonable conjugation: iba, ibas, iba, ?bamos and iban. So, even they ran out of perfidious co

that to us in exacting their revenge. Here’s the Pet?rito: Fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos and fueron. Think this is the end? No! Who ever said Spanish had to conjugate verbs using an infinitive that made sense?

We did not even get to the second past tense. In all of the entire Spanish language there are only three verbs that are irregular in the second past tense, called the imperfect or imperfecto de indicativo. You guessed it—IR is one of them! But the Spaniards could only come up in the imperfect with a fairly reasonable conjugation: iba, ibas, iba, ?bamos and iban. So, even they ran out of perfidious conjugations related to the IR verb.

But listen: Whatever you do, please do not tell the Spaniards that the imperfect conjugation is fairly easy for us English speakers. What they don’t know won’t hurt them—or better yet, help them! And, for Christ’s sake, don’t tell them that this tense does not exist in English. They may think that they then have a license to invent other tenses to punish us. Basta!

C. A Word About the Subjunctive in Learning Spanish:

We’ve warned the class that unless they learn Spanish well enough to know how to use the subjunctive correctly, they will never be able to speak correct Spanish. Nevertheless, we are going to spare their learning the subjunctive for now. Just remember the conjugation of the present subjunctive of IR. That’s all we ask: vaya, vayas, vaya, vayamos and vayan.

But, if our little Georgia Peach gets really ambitious, she can think imperfect subjunctive. To accommodate her, I will give the simple conjugations, but it would be cruel and unusual punishment, prohibited by the Eight Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to require that our little Georgia Peach be subjected to such cruelty, all at in one lesson just to learn Spanish. So, here it is FYI, or FGPI, for Georgia Peach’s Information: fuera, fueras, fuera, fu?ramos and fueran. Since the Eight Amendment protections are allegedly still in effect for U.S. citizens, we will not even mention the second form of the imperfect subjunctive, the fuese or “se” form. RICA wants to help the student learn Spanish, not to commit collective suicide on Monday mornings.

D. Learning Spanish May be at Time Embarrassing:

And just when the little Georgia Peach thought she was “out of the Georgia woods,” the professor mentions “yendo.” She becomes so exercised at hearing the word that she blurts out in front of the whole class: “what in the hell is `yendo’”! Embarrassed, she runs to the bathroom and washes her little Georgia mouth out with soap, as her religious parents down in Georgia taught her to do when “bad” words force themselves to the fore. She regains her composure, returns to the classroom and exits, able to stand straight up.

We deem that she has suffered enough trauma for one lesson. We do not want to be sued for “over-conjugating” our students. So, we’ll wait ‘til Part III to discuss the second most evil and revengeful verb the Spaniards concocted, SER.

Volume 1, Number 2.

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