25 Core Spanish Verbs

These are the most common Spanish verbs, and you can say quite a lot with only these 25 Spanish words! The first six verbs listed, especially. These verbs are often used with other verbs to create more complex sentences.

A couple of notes here. The first two verbs, ser and estar both mean “to be.” But ser is used for permanent situations. For example, “soy Caitlin” means “I am Caitlin.” (Soy is ser conjugated for the first person.)

We use soy because my name is Caitlin, and unless I decide to change it, it will always be Caitlin.

Estar is used for situations that could change. For example, “estoy bien” means “I’m fine.” (Estoy is estar conjugated for the first person as well.) We use estar for this because I’m fine right now… But tomorrow, who knows? Maybe it’ll be a rough day, and I actually “no estoy bien.” (Or “not well.”)

The other note I have for you is that these verbs are unconjugated, so they’re in their infinitive, or dictionary, form. Many are irregular Spanish verbs because they’re so common. The more common words are, the more they change over time causing them to become irregular. But, these verbs are so common, it’ll be easy to master once you get to it!