It is important that anyone studying Spanish pays special attention to irregular Spanish verbs and especially Querer and it’s conjugations as it is used often. Querer is often utilized as the Spanish version of the English verb ‘to want’, but is also used instead
of the Spanish verb amar, which means ‘to love’.
Querer is a stem changing verb which is a verb that is often referred to as a ‘regular’ irregular verb and this is because the verb endings are consistent to those used by a regular verb, with the only exception being the preterite tense. In the case of querer the ‘e’ in the stem transforms into ‘ie’ when it is conjugated in a few tenses and in some of the other tenses the short sounding and single ‘r’ becomes a double ‘rr’.
However, the most drastic alteration is when querer is conjugated in the preterite, the stem ‘quer-‘ changing to ‘quis-‘ for no apparent reason!
As with all Spanish verb conjugation the best place to start is with the Present tense. Each verb ending, as already covered, copy the pattern of regular -er verbs, but the stem does change a little. These changes in the stem also occurs in the present tense of the Subjunctive and the imperative tense.
Present Tense Conjugation
yo quiero – I want
tú quieres – you want
usted/él/ella quiere – you, he or she wants
nosotros/as queremos – we want
vosotros/as queréis – you (all) want
ustedes/ellos/ellas quieren – you (all), they want
It should be noted that the 1st and 2nd person plural stem does not alter, and this also applies for all other tenses that are affected by this irregularity.
Querer Preterite Tense
The preterite is a tense that is very often irregular for many verbs and querer is no exception, it’s stem transforms drastically as detailed here and also the regular -er endings for yo and él/usted are replaced by -e and -o respectively:
yo quise – I wanted
tú quisiste – you wanted
usted/él/ella quiso – you, he or she wanted
nosotros/as quisimos – we wanted
vosotros/as quisisteis – you (all) wanted
ustedes/ellos/ellas quisieron – you (all), they wanted
Unlike the present tense the irregular conjugations covers all persons. This specific irregularity is also found in the Subjunctive Imperfect and Future conjugations and again applies to every form.
Future Tense Conjugation of Querer
The last irregularity is encountered when using querer and is when the single -r transforms into the rolling -rr and this happens when the verb is used in the Conditional and Future Tenses, once again this irregularity applies to all conjugations in both of these tenses.
yo querré – I will want
tú querrás – you will want
usted/él/ella querrá – you, he or she will want
nosotros/as querremos – we will want
vosotros/as querréis – you (all) will want
ustedes/ellos/ellas querrán – you (all), they will want
So, as you can see, querer will take some effort to learngetting to know but with by using a Spanish verb conjugator for verb training there is no reason why querer can’t be learned quickly and used confidently.