Conjugating the Spanish Verb Cantar (to Sing)

Spanish verbs fall into different groups, and each group is conjugated a little differently. If you’re going to master Spanish verbs like cantar, you need to be able to identify which group a verb belongs to: regular (follows regular conjugation rules for -ar, -er, and -ir verbs), stem-changing (morphs depending on how you use it in a sentence), spelling-changing (has consonant-spelling changes in some forms to follow pronunciation rules), or reflexive (reflects the action back on the subject of the sentence).

Cantar (kahn-tahr) (to sing) is a regular -ar verb, so its conjugation is pretty straightforward. Here it is in the present tense:

The following examples show you cantar in action:

• Ella canta en la escuela todos los días. (She sings at school every day.)

• Canto y canto y no me canso. (I sing and sing and I don’t get tired.)

Need to know how to conjugate cantar in another tense? The following tables show you the preterit, imperfect, and future forms.

You use the preterit tense like this:

• Cantamos el himno nacional esta mañana. (We sang the National Anthem this morning.)

• ¿Cantaron tus padres cuando te casaste? (Did your parents sing when you got married?)

Here are some examples of the imperfect tense:

• María cantaba siempre en la ducha. (Mary used to always sing in the shower.)

• ¿Cantaban ustedes cuando subían a las montañas? (Did you sing when you used to climb mountains?)

The following samples put the future tense to work:

• Jorge cantará en la boda este otoño. (Jorge will sing at the wedding this fall.)

• Cantaré en el coro este domingo. (I will sing in the choir this Sunday.)