Catalan/Verbs regulars

Catalan verbs can be tricky to conjugate. Many verbs are irregular, though similarities between three basic groups of verbs do exist and a few ground rules can be made. Verb use in Catalan is similar to French and Spanish but has a few notable exceptions:

• Like Spanish, Catalan regularly uses two past tenses.
  • If the action was completed today, or the result of the action is still valid, Catalan uses the pretèrit indefinit
    • Aquest matí hem cantat—We sang this morning. Enguany he visitat les illes balears—This year I visited the Balearic Islands
  • If the action was completed before today, or the action clearly occurred only once, Catalan uses the pretèrit perfet
    • Ahir al matí vam cantar—We sang yesterday morning. L'any passat vaig visitar les illes balears—Last year I visited the Balearic Islands
• A third past tense exists, similar to the passé simple in French, the pretèrit perfet simple. Like its French counterpart, it is only used in the more eloquent literary form of Catalan, and it is almost never used in spoken language.
  • • El compositor nasqué/naixé l'any 1923—The composer was born in 1923.

TO BE CONTINUED

External Resources

Books

• Els verbs catalans conjugats by J.B. Xuriguera (Edicions Claret), a small and comprehensive book outlining the Catalan verb conjugation

Websites

• Verbix, an online verb conjugator for many languages. Tense, mood, ... names indicated in Catalan
• catalandictionary.org also offer free conjugations of more than 1,000 of the verbs contained in their dictionary, with tenses, mood, ... names indicated in English
• Diccionari normatiu valencià, the AVL's official online dictionary for Valencian with Valencian conjugations for all verbs