el progresivo In English, progressive verbs end in –ing. To form the progressive tense in Spanish, we add –ando to the stem of –ar verbs and –iendo to the stem of –er and –ir verbs. Hablar = hablando (talking) Comer = comiendo (eating) Vivir = viviendo (living) This goes for all verbs, even little ones like ser and ver. Ser = (ser) siendo Ver = (ver) viendo Stem-changers will change just like they do in the preterite… we only change the verbs that are –ir stem-changers. And just like in the preterite, it changes e to i and o to u. Dormir = durmiendo Mentir = mintiendo Pedir = pidiendo Servir = sirviendo

How do we use the progressive? It can be used with the present tense of estar to say what is going on right now. Yo estoy caminando. I am walking. Tú estás charlando. You are chatting. Todos están comiendo. Everyone is eating. Nacho está durmiendo. Nacho is sleeping. It can be used with the present tense of estar to say what is going on right now. Yo estoy caminando. I am walking. Tú estás charlando. You are chatting. Todos están comiendo. Everyone is eating. Nacho está durmiendo. Nacho is sleeping. It can be used with the imperfect of estar to say what was going on. Yo estaba caminando. I was walking. Tú estabas charlando. You were chatting. Todos estaban comiendo. Everyone was eating. Nacho estaba durmiendo. Nacho was sleeping. It can be used with the imperfect of estar to say what was going on. Yo estaba caminando. I was walking. Tú estabas charlando. You were chatting. Todos estaban comiendo. Everyone was eating. Nacho estaba durmiendo. Nacho was sleeping. estar (presente) estoyestamos estásestáis estáestán estar (imperfecto) estabaestábamos estabasestábais estabaestaban

using the imperfect progressive with a preterite The imperfect progressive and preterite are often used together. Nacho estaba caminando… Nacho was walking… cuando (when) se rompió el pie. he broke his foot. Note that it does not have to be in this order. We can also say Nacho se rompió el pie cuando estaba caminando. Nacho broke his foot when he was walking. (what a clutz!) Note that it does not have to be in this order. We can also say Nacho se rompió el pie cuando estaba caminando. Nacho broke his foot when he was walking. (what a clutz!) Click here to watch some cool videos showing how this works!

Where do we stick our pronouns? Here are our indirect object pronouns: (the receivers) Here are our direct object pronouns: (what’s being received) menos teos leles menos teos lo la los las The indirect object pronoun always comes before the direct object pronoun. Me lo das. You give it to me. Te lo doy. I give it to you. Me lo das. You give it to me. Te lo doy. I give it to you. With verb phrases, you have a choice to put them in front of the entire verb phrase, or you can stick them to the end of the infinitive or progressive. Certain pronouns just can’t go together though. You can’t use le or les with lo/la/los/las. You get funky sounding things like lela and leslo. When that happens, just change the le/les to se. Se lo doy a mi amigo. (I give it to my friend) Voy a darselo. (I’m going to give it to him)