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Permalink Reply by Eddy on May 15, 2008 at 6:50pm

Sé

Sed

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Permalink Reply by nahaku on May 15, 2008 at 6:53pm

Thanks Eddy. Would you also know all of the forms? Tu, Usted, Ustedes and Nosotros?

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Permalink Reply by Eddy on May 15, 2008 at 6:57pm

I may be wrong but I think the full list is as follows.

tú sé
él/ella/usted sea
nosotros seamos
vosotros sed
ellos/ustedes sean

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Permalink Reply by Jim on May 15, 2008 at 8:17pm

go to this site. it has almost all the verbs conjugated. about 15,000 of them

http://users.ipfw.edu/JEHLE/VERBLIST.HTM

you will find about 150 conjugations of "ser"

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Permalink Reply by David H on May 15, 2008 at 9:54pm

don't forget the negatives. (also known as the subjunctive)

no seas
no sea
no seamos
no seáis
no sean

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Permalink Reply by Jim on May 15, 2008 at 10:38pm

am i missing something here. the question was how to conjugate "ser" which i translate as "to be"

Sed is thirst, and beyond that I am lost with the above threads.

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Permalink Reply by David H on May 15, 2008 at 11:45pm

the question was specifically about the 'command' conjugation of ser. yes, ser means to be. when conjugated in the imperative the following forms are seen:

sé tú/no seas tú
sea ud./no sea ud.
seamos nosotros/no seamos nosotros
sed vosotros/no seáis vosotros
sean uds./no sean uds.

the yo form is typically not used in the imperative (in the rare cases when it is appropriate, the subjunctive is used). the vosotros form of the command for ser does have the same form as the spanish word for hunger. context, however, would let you know which one you are dealing with. the command, in this case, will be far less common a word.

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Permalink Reply by Jim on May 16, 2008 at 12:09am

help me with command conjugation. I have difficulty with tenses etc. I cannot find sea, seais, sean or any of those in the conjugations for ser. can you explain this simply

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Permalink Reply by Natasha on May 16, 2008 at 2:25am

As in English, the more common words are sometimes conjugated irregularly. (How do we get "are" from "to be"? No idea!!!) ser does not follow the normal rules for forming tenses. You simply have to memorize how it goes.

Is there a particular sentence you were wanting to translate?

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Permalink Reply by nahaku on May 16, 2008 at 5:29am

Thank you to all. This has been very helpful!

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Permalink Reply by Jim on May 16, 2008 at 10:23am

The fact that when I was in school, my courses did not include intensive lessons in what we called english. My classes were more directed to the business use of the english language. We did not really go into tenses etc. Now here I am in my mid 60's trying to understand present, future, imperfect and so on. In the original question of this thread the poster asked about the "command conjugation of ser". Would that be the same as the "imperative"? I have some frustration because of this handicap but I am still very much enjoying learning a new language.

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Permalink Reply by Natasha on May 16, 2008 at 10:53am

Yes, you are correct, an imperative statement is a command. You might find the book 301 Spanish Verbs helpful.

You probably know that all verbs in Spanish end in either -ar, -er, or -ir. How they are conjugated depends on which type they are. I think most basic Spanish courses follow a sequence similar to the following:

First learn present tense, then positive and negative commands (which, as you see, are conjugated differently in Spanish). Then move on to preterit & imperfect (the two past tenses in Spanish), and future. After that you can worry about subjuntive (which is all but obsolete in English, although it occasionally occurs in phrases like "If it were to rain . . ."), and compound tenses using "haber" (to have). BTW, many English learners, unless they are at a very advanced level, ignore the vosotros conjugations because they are archaic.

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