Meat & Potatoes
Turn hablar, trabajar and estudiar into real sentences about your day — spoken, not memorized.
Drop the -ar and add the person ending: -o, -as, -a, -amos, -an — yo hablo, tú hablas, él habla, nosotros hablamos, ellos hablan. The trap is in your ear, not the rule: tú always ends in -s (tú hablas) and él/ella never does (él habla) — one letter separates you from he. And never leave the infinitive in a conjugated slot: it's yo hablo español, never yo hablar español.
Below: each ending anchored to verbs you'll actually use, how Argentina's vos shifts the accent, the mistakes that mark a beginner — and a way to lock the pattern in by talking, not by filling in conjugation tables.
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Regional Spanish
Textbooks teach one word. Locals use several — pick your region's and stay consistent.
| English | Mexico | Argentina (vos) |
|---|---|---|
| you speak | tú hablas | vos hablás |
| you cook | tú cocinas | vos cocinás |
| you swim | tú nadas | vos nadás |
Watch out
The part no drill site can do
Carla
Your grammar teacher for this pack
There are no conjugation tables to fill in here. In the Meat & Potatoes lessons, Carla just gets you talking about your actual day: you narrate your morning with -AR verbs — yo desayuno a las ocho, yo camino al parque, yo trabajo en casa. Then she rotates one verb between question and answer — ¿tú trabajas? … él trabaja — until your ear catches that final -s on its own. By the weekend beat, you're using bailar, cocinar, viajar and cantar in full sentences without thinking about endings at all.
Blank mid-sentence and nothing bad happens — she waits. That's the practice, without unnecessary judgement.
Finish the 8 lessons and Meat & Potatoes is yours — earned, not given.
First 10 lessons free · 10-minute spoken lessons · your AI coaching team remembers you
Quick answers
Drop -ar and add -o, -as, -a, -amos, -an: yo hablo, tú hablas, él habla, nosotros hablamos, ellos hablan. In Latin America you won't need the vosotros form — you all is ellos-style hablan.
One letter: tú always ends in -s, él/ella never does. tú cocinas, él cocina también. Train your ear to listen for that final -s — it tells you who's being talked about.
The ones that power daily routines: hablar (speak), estudiar (study), trabajar (work), caminar (walk), cocinar (cook), escuchar (listen). They all conjugate identically, so five verbs buy you dozens of sentences.
The stress moves to the ending and gains a written accent: vos hablás instead of tú hablas, vos cocinás, vos nadás. Same verb, same meaning — Argentines will understand your tú forms perfectly.
No — the ending already carries the person, so speakers drop the pronoun when it's clear: camina cada mañana instead of él camina, estudiamos juntos instead of nosotros estudiamos. Keep the pronoun when you need contrast: tú trabajas y él descansa.
