Conjugating the Irregular Spanish Verb Querer (to Want)

Spanish verbs fall into different groups, and each group is conjugated a little differently. If you’re going to master Spanish verbs like querer, you need to be able to identify which group a verb belongs to: regular (follows regular conjugation rules for -ar, -er, and -ir verbs), stem-changing (morphs depending on how you use it in a sentence), spelling-changing (has consonant-spelling changes in some forms to follow pronunciation rules), or reflexive (reflects the action back on the subject of the sentence).

Querer (keh-rehr) (to want) is tricky. In the present tense, it has an e-to-ie stem change in all but the nosotros and vosotros forms. Other popular irregular Spanish verbs include: hacer, tener, dormir, ir. Here’s the present tense conjugation:

The following examples show you querer in action:

• ¿Quieres comprarme un teléfono? (Do you want to buy a telephone from me?)

• No quiero tu teléfono. (I don’t want your phone.)

Here’s where it starts to get weird. In the preterit, querer has a few pretty significant irregularities:

• It doesn’t really have a stem change so much as it picks up a completely different stem: quis-.

• It doesn’t use the same endings as normal -er verbs in the yo and él/usted forms.

• It doesn’t even have the same meaning. That’s right: Although querer means “to want” in the present, in the preterit it means “to try.”

Got all that? Look carefully at the following table to see all this preterit craziness at work: You use the preterit tense like this:

• Ella quiso acostarse a las nueve. (She tried to go to bed at 9 p.m.)

• Nosotros quisimos cantar. (We tried to sing.)

After all that preterit drama, the imperfect form is a breath of fresh air: In the imperfect, querer conjugates like a regular verb. Check out the following table and examples. Here are some examples of the imperfect tense:

• ¿Querían ustedes ir a nadar los sábados? (Did you used to want to go swimming on Saturdays?)

• Si. Queríamos ir a nadir los sábados. (Yes. We used to want to go swimming on Saturdays.)

But wait! You’re not out of the woods yet. In the future tense, querer undergoes another stem transformation to querr- (the regular stem quer- + another r). However, it still uses the normal future endings: Use the future tense like this:

• ¿Querrás irte a Europa este verano? (Will you want to go to Europe this summer?)

• Sí. Querré irme a Europa contigo. (Yes. I will want to go to Europe with you.)