Boning Up on Irregular Past Participles in Spanish

The Spanish language has a hefty collection of verbs that have irregular past participles. Not all verbs can be as structured and disciplined as the regular -ar, -er, and -ir verbs. That would make life as a student of the Spanish language much too easy.

To keep these irregular past participles from becoming too unwieldy, you can divide them into two groups:

Group 1 consists of -er and -ir verbs in which a vowel immediately precedes the infinitive ending. These verbs form their past participles regularly, but you must add an accent mark over the i in the -ido ending. Verbs that end in -uir are not included. No accent mark is necessary when a verb such as construir (to construct) is put into the past participle form, construido. The following table includes some Group 1 verbs:

You use the irregular past participles just like the regular ones: pair it up with the conjugated form of haber (to have), like this:

• Ella ha leído aquella novela diez veces. (She has read that novel ten times.)

• Yo no he oído aquella canción. (I have not heard that song.)

Group 2 consists of verbs with irregular past participles that follow no particular pattern and thus must be memorized. The following table includes several common verbs whose past participles follow no rules:

You can see them in action here:

• Ella ha escrito una carta a su abuela. (She has written a letter to her grandmother.)

• Ellos han visto todas sus películas. (The have seen all of her movies.)