Conjugating the Spanish Verb Esperar (to Wait)

Spanish verbs fall into different groups, and each group is conjugated a little differently. If you’re going to master Spanish verbs like esperar, 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).

Esperar (ehs-pehr-ahr) (to wait) is a regular -ar verb, so its conjugation is pretty straightforward. Here it is in the present tense:

The following examples show you esperar in action:

• Esperamos por el tren en la estación. (We are waiting for the train at the station.)

• ¿Espera usted en la oficina? (Are you waiting at the office?)

Need to know how to conjugate esperar in another tense? The following tables show you the preterit, imperfect, and future forms.

You use the preterit tense like this:

• Ellos esperaron mucho tiempo por sus pasaportes. (They waited a long time for their passports.)

• ¿Esperaron ustedes mucho tiempo? (Did you wait for a long time?)

Here are some examples of the imperfect tense:

• ¿Esperabas por el taxi todos los jueves? (Did you used to wait for the taxi every Thursday?)

• Sí. Lo esperaba todos los jueves? (Yes. I used to wait for it every Thursday.)

The following samples put the future tense to work:

• ¿Esperarán ustedes por el tren? (Will you wait for the train?)

• No. Esperaremos por el bus (We will wait for the bus.)