What if you have two or more verbs? Here's how we would do it in English:
I want to eat.
The underlined verb, to eat, is in the infinitive form - and if you're fuzzy on what the infinitive is, it's the unconjugated form of a verb. The first verb is conjugated to the first person subject-verb agreement, but the second is not. And lucky you! It works exactly the same way in Spanish. Consider:
Yo quiero comer. ｜I like to eat.
Necesitas dormir. ｜You need to sleep.
The first verb is conjugated, but the second is not. If you have three verbs, the second and third are separated by "de", but the third is still infinitive. Anything more than that needs to be separated by a comma. This works in all tenses, but there are still 2 times when you should not use the infinitive verbs rule. Here they are:
1.) When you "are doing" something. (Ex. I am eating.) This uses a Spanish gerund, which will be covered when we get to participles.
2.) When you have the word "que" used as the subordinating conjunction "that". This calls for a very difficult tense called the subjunctive, which we will also cover later.
But what about object pronouns in this case? That's a pretty big thing to know. Here's how not to do it:
Yo quiero lo tirar. ｜I want to throw it.
Object pronouns never go between two verbs! Luckily, however, we have two ways we can solve this, and you can choose whichever one works best for you.
1.) Object pronoun goes before both verbs: Yo lo quiero tirar.
2.) Object pronoun is tacked onto the end of the second verb: Yo quiero tirarlo.
Either one is correct. I prefer the second method because it gives me a bit more time to think about the object while I'm forming the sentence. Any advantage to a gringo should be seized.
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Language Bites, Volume I: Spanish ✔
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