Friday 8 July 2011

Ir and Ser

Yesterday's post covered the complicated sounding 'imperfect subjunctive' form of the verb 'ser' ('to be'). In fact this is also the imperfect subjunctive tense of 'ir' ('to go'). The verbs 'ser' and 'ir' share two other tenses as well - the preterite, or simple past, and the less commonly used future subjunctive. I like to think of this being similar to 'been' in English. 'I have been eating' or 'I have been a waiter' express the past tense of 'to be' but 'I have been to Spain' expresses the past tense of 'to go'.

More on imperfect subjunctives tomorrow. I just wanted to share that idiosyncracy of the language which I rediscovered whilst writing yesterday's post.

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