Tabla de Contenidos
In Spanish, the verb to live literally refers to the act of being alive and, figuratively, to the act of enjoying life. It is a regular verb and is conjugated taking into account the ending -ir.
The following conjugation tables correspond to this verb in the indicative mood. To memorize them, keep in mind that you must replace the ending -ir in each grammatical person with the corresponding ending in each one.
Note that these tables show the most common tenses in Spanish. These are the present, the preterite, and the imperfect. We include participles, gerunds and the conjugation in the indicative and subjunctive mood.
In Spanish it is conjugated using three grammatical persons, each with its corresponding singular and plural number.
Indicative present
| I | alive | I live in Ontario. |
| You | do you live | You live in a big house. |
| you/he/she | lives | She lives in the countryside. |
| Us | we live | We live in an apartment. |
| You | you live | You live in Barcelona . |
| You | they live | You live in Argentina. |
| you/them/them | they live | They live in Alberta. |
Past Indicative
In the indicative mood of Spanish there are two verb tenses to refer to the past tense, also called the preterite. These are the present perfect and the present perfect. The present perfect is used to speak, from the present, of actions already completed or that occurred only once.
Perfect tense
| I | i lived | I lived in New York. | |
| You | you lived | You lived in a nice house. | |
| you/he/she | lived | She lived in the city. | |
| Us | we live | We live on a farm. | |
| You | you lived | You lived in Barcelona . | |
| You | they lived | You lived in Argentina. | |
| they / they | they lived | They lived in Alberta. |
Past Perfect
It is used to refer to actions in the past that have already been completed. It does not indicate when the action finished or started exactly and is used to refer to routines in the past. It is equivalent to the past progressive and the simple past of English.
| I | she lived | I lived in Tijuana. | |
| You | you lived | You lived in a big house. | |
| you/he/she | she lived | He lived in the country. | |
| Us | we lived | We lived in an apartment. | |
| You | you lived | You lived in Barcelona. | |
| you/them/them | they lived | They lived in California. |
Future of callsign
| I | I will live | I will live in Tijuana. | |
| You | you will live | You will live in a big hut. | |
| you/he/she | will live | He will live in the country. | |
| Us | we will live | We will live in an apartment. | |
| You | you will live | You will live in Barcelona. | |
| you/them/them | they will live | They will live in Alberta. |
The non-personal forms: the infinitive gerund and the participle
Let’s start with the infinitive. In Spanish it can occur with three possible endings: -ar (to dominate), -er (to submit), -ir (to suppress). They can also be nouns, depending on the sentence. The infinitive is used accompanied by certain grammatical constructions, some adjectives and other verbs, but its base form does not need more than the ending to identify itself. It can also have function as a noun.
| Infinitive of living | Living healthy requires a good diet |
For its part, we can identify the gerund thanks to having the ending -ndo in common. Depending on the infinitive ending of each verb in question, we will conjugate as follows:
Verbs ending in -ar are replaced with -ando.
Verbs ending in -er and -ir are replaced with -iendo.
The gerund does not have an inflectional form of gender and number, so this table applies to the other grammatical persons.
| Gerund of live | Is living | She is living with her parents. | She is living with her parents. |
The participle for its part is formed by replacing -ido or -ado by the root of the verbs in the infinitive. There are also irregular forms of the participle, and it is quite common for non-native speakers to use the wrong form. For example, the verbs are irregular: dir (said is used, not decided), open (open is used, not open) and write (written is used, not written).
References
Cervantes Virtual Center. (2009). Use of the present perfect in Spanish-speaking countries. Available at: https://cvc.cervantes.es/foros/leer_asunto1.asp?vCodigo=35527
Spanish dictionary. (s/f). Conjugation of the verb to live. Available at: https://dle.rae.es/vivir?m=form#conjugaciongxwU1LO
