[SpringsSong]

Krattia's eyes lit up suddenly in a manner that should have otherwise disturbed most, but soon, her pencil began flying across the paper on which she was writing, praying that this sudden remembrance of verbs and subjects would stick.  She divided the paper into three colums with five divisions:

Verb:  Yo  |  Tú  |  Él/Ella/Usted  |  Ellos/Ellas  |  Nosotros
Hablar: Hablo  |  Hablas  |  Habla  |  Hablan  |  Hablamos
Aprender: Aprendo  |  Aprendes  |  Aprende  |  Aprenden  |  Aprendemos
Escribir: Escribo  |  Escribes  |  Escribe  |  Escriben  |  Escribimos

This, however, she quickly turned away from, her pencil falling to the desk as she looked up at the board again, examining the words again.  She wanted to raise her and and ask why the -er and -ir verbs were the same in any form but the nosotros, but at the same time, she just wanted to relearn the language.  She could wait a while longer yet.

[1.8]

[amapup]

An Albino Piyo suddenly flew into the room, seemingly flustered. A purple and blue box was dragged behind him by a purple ribbon. "Sorry I'm late!" he said, hopping up to a desk and fluttering into the chair. The only one he didn't know about was conjugates, so he took mental notes on that. After all, he hadn't brought a pencil. He hadn't known that had a name, though.

He scanned the noun tense notes, but didn't give them much attention. He already knew that. Same with the infinitive verbs. Ah well, Yipo was sure there were others in the class that hadn't gotten there yet. He proceeded with getting some utensils while the Bruma - he hadn't noticed its name on the board - continued to speak. He hopped off of his chair, picking up one of the light colored feathers that had fallen by his seat. Then he took the giftbox and tore off a thin layer of cardboard from the inside. Somehow retrieving ink from the coloring on the box, he hopped back into his seat, now equipped with a quill and "paper". This should help him out.

(super late )

[Freezair]

Leonard waited quietly while the Piyo burst in. Clearly, he didn't have much of a problem with distractions. Indeed, he took the time to wander around and look at the notes people were taking.

He chuckled to a stop when he came to Krattia. "Clearly, you've been here before," he laughed. "Alright, alright. I get the picture. We'll move on."

Squeezing himself behind the desk again, he began his lecture again.

"Now, every verb in Spanish, in the present tense, typically has five conjugations. Six if you count 'vosotros,' but we're not using that one here. Now, each one is dependant on the pronoun or noun that is the subject. The categories are as follows:"

CATEGORY 1: Yo
CATEGORY 2: Tú
CATEGORY 3: Usted, Él/Ella, any single-word subject
CATEGORY 4: Nosotros, "Alguien y yo" ("Someone and I")
CATEGORY 5: Ustedes, Ellos/Ellas, any multi-word subject

"To figure out how to conjugate a regular verb in Spanish, look at your subject, then look at the ending of your verb. Then replace the -ar, -er, or -ir ending with one of the following:"

IF IT'S AN -AR VERB:
CATEGORY 1: -o
CATEGORY 2: -as
CATEGORY 3: -a
CATEGORY 4: -amos
CATEGORY 5: -an

IF IT'S AN -ER VERB:
CATEGORY 1: -o
CATEGORY 2: -es
CATEGORY 3: -e
CATEGORY 4: -emos
CATEGORY 5: -en

IF IT'S AN -IR VERB:
CATEGORY 1: -o
CATEGORY 2: -es
CATEGORY 3: -e
CATEGORY 4: -imos
CATEGORY 5: -en

"So... hablar would be hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, hablan. Aprender is aprendo, aprendes, aprende, aprendemos, aprenden. Escribir is escribo, escribes, escribe, escribimos, escriben.

"You may notice that in category 1--the 'yo' form--they're all the same. And -ER and -IR verbs are nearly identical save for the Category 4 'Nosotros' form. I... don't know why that is, honestly. It's a linguistic quirk."

"This is for regular verbs in the present tense, mind. I hate to tell you, but a lot of the verbs we get to when we jump into vocabulary will be irregular. But you'll see they still follow similar patterns. Head hurt yet?"

[8]

[rayquaza7996]

"So," Silver asked, raising her hand, "would 'Yo escribo' be I 'I write'? I'm a little bit confused as to how this all fits together."

She was confused, but she continued to scribe down notes, most of them direct copies off the board. She could orginize them better later, during her free time. Heh, her free time. That was rather funny. Ironic, too, the amount of things she apparently did in her nonexisting freetime.

(short post is short...but there wasn't much else to say.))

[Freezair]

Leonard nodded. "Yes, that's exactly it. 'Yo escribo' would be 'I write.' Similarly, 'Yo hablo' would be, 'I talk,' and 'Yo aprendo' would be 'I learn.' 'Nostros escribimos' would be 'we write,' and so on, and so forth, etcetera."

"In fact, I was going to save this, but I'll say it now. Because of the large number of conjugations in Spanish, you can more easily use a null subject. Which is just a fancy way of saying 'You don't need the 'yo,' or 'ella,' or whichever pronoun or subject word you're going to use. 'Yo escribo' and just 'escribo' at the beginning of a sentence mean the same thing."

[9]

[SpringsSong]

"It is only because of my relations with an Other-world being that I know these, Sr. Newhouse.  She taught me what little Spanish she remembered." Krattia said quietly, looking down at her paper again.  "I doubt that I would remember any other conjugations.  She mentioned quite a few of them... past, future, the '-ing' tense... those were the only other ones she's studied."

In fact, Fire had forgotten most of those conjugations; even the name of one of them had escaped her memory when Krattia had asked about it, and then, had come in here to see if she could learn anything more.

[2.0]

[amapup]

Yipo listened, though he already knew most of this stuff. 'Alguien' was new, though. So he wrote it down.

alguien - someone

He chewed on the end of his feather, waiting.

El escucha a el profesor. No sabe alguien. Escribe 'alguien' en su hoja de papel.
(practicing writing it)

[Freezair]

Leonardo waited for a lull in the students discussing amongst themselves and asking him questions before he returned to the front of the class. He tried to look cheerfully grim to prepare them for the next part of the lesson.

"Unfortunately for ustedes, I have some bad news," he chuckled. "The verbs you will probably be using the most--the verbs you will get the most use out of--are mostly irregular. You'll still see patterns in them, and in many ways their conjugations do line up with these rules, but it's not as simple as pulling off the end."

He wrote out a list of verbs on the board.

SER: to be
ESTAR: to be
IR: to go
TENER: to have
HACER: to make/to do
DAR: to give
QUERER: to want
HABER: there is/there are

"We're going to go over these in sets. Copy them down, and we'll tackle them in pieces. First, we're going to do ser and estar, the two 'to be' verbs. Then ir. Tener and hacer will be one set, as will dar and querer. Finally, we'll cover haber, which is quite special. And I warn you right now: All of these are irregular. Sorry!"

[10]

[rayquaza7996]

Silver scribbled the words down quickly, swishing her tail that still remained in her human form when a bug got too close to her face. Her writing wasn't really that neat, or intresting, but it got the girst of the statements down. Heck, more than the gists - she had jotted down a transcript of most of what the teacher had said, and even changed some of it into complete sentences. She loved complete sentenses - they were her personal addiction. Not an unhealthy addiction, either, not when compared the the ailments of Kesha and Cinura.

 She looked up. Crap, irregular verbs? That didn't sound fun. That didn't even sound remotely fun. Oh well. It it would help her patients, it was okay.

[SpringsSong]

...why do I have a bad feeling about the irregular verbs...?

Krattia felt all of the knowledge she had fly out the window as soon as Sr. Newhouse mentioned irregular verbs.  Fire hadn't mentioned those to her!  True, she'd heard Fire use some of them, like quiero and tengo and a few variants on estar, but she hadn't bothered telling Krattia how to conjugate them!  After a few seconds more, she rose her hand as she stood up nervously.

"¿Puedo ir al baño?" she asked, remembering the one phrase that Fire had taught her to never forget if she was with a Spanish-speaking group of people.  She hurriedly left the room and walked down the hallway, heading for a restroom and splashing water on her face as she stared in the mirror.

Krattia, for the love of Xai're, we're not supposed to be just lounging about here!  We're supposed to be preparing for our next mission!

A few minutes later, she entered the room again and took her seat and turned to a fresh sheet of paper.

[2.2]

[amapup]

Yipo lifted his head as the professor continued talking. Hmm, querer and haber. He'd never heard of those before. As he jotted them down, he wondered if 'haber' had anything to do with 'hay'. He looked over at Krattia at her question. Puedo meant may I? Apparently. And now he knew the proper way to ask how to go to the restroom! He excitedly added the word on his paper.

alguien - someone
querer -
haber -
puedo - may I

Yipo veo el profesor. El profesor enseña verbos irregulares. El piyo no aprende los verbos, so el escribe en su papel. Escucha la cuestion de Krattia. No aprende 'puedo' tambien. Escribe mas en su hoja de papel.

[Freezair]

"Oh, dear!" Leonard look flustered. "Thank you, Krattia--yes, you may go to the bathroom, and you just reminded me of two important verbs I should have added! Poder and poner. Well, we'll make that another set before we move on to vocabularly proper."

"Now, for our first set of verbs..."

SER and ESTAR

"First off, the conjugations." He wrote them on the board.

SER: to be
Category 1: Soy
Category 2: Eres
Category 3: Es
Category 4: Somos
Category 5: Son

ESTAR: to be
Category 1: Estoy
Cat 2: Estás
Cat 3: Está
Cat 4: Estámos
Cat 5: Están

"Repeat after me!" He tapped each one on the board, calling out the word and beckoning the others to follow him. He put especial emphasis on the pronounciation. Rather than the thick, "rounded off" vowels of English, he left them high and open.

"Now, as you may notice, these two words have the same translation: To be. However, they are quite different in their usage.

"To put it as simply as possible: Ser is for permanent things; estar is for temporary things."

He cleared his throat. "Well, that's really an oversimplification. Some things you use ser for seem very temporary, and some of the things for estar... Well, let me just draw up a list."

SER is used for:
--Permanent traits of a thing (color, gender, phystical traits such as "fat" or "tall", what it's made of)
----Yo soy un Bruma gordo (fat). Son manzanas. (He drew a little picture of an apple to clarify the meaning of "manzana.")
--Time of day
----La hora es doce y media. (The time [hour] is twelve and a half.)
--Age (general)
----Somos juvenes. (We are young people.)

ESTAR is used for:
--Feelings and emotions
-----Estoy feliz. (I am happy.)
--Location
----¿Donde está mi camiseta? (Where is my sweater?) Están a la tienda. (We are at the store.)
--Health
----Estámos enfermos. (We're sick.)
--The progressive tense

He tapped that last one. "That's the next thing we'll be getting to."

"Knowing between the two is fairly important. Some adjectives change their meaning entirely depending on which they're used with! For example, Estoy aburrido means 'I am bored.'--I hope you're not, by the way. But Soy aburrido means, 'I am boring!'" He chuckled nervously. "And I really hope I'm not!"

Now he was strugging to find board space. He erased one quick bit of writing. "Alright, here's a quick exercise. Just do it in your chairs. Here's a couple example sentences. Now, tell me: Would you use ser or estar for each? Don't worry about translating them; just think about the verb!"

1. My Lucain is Striped.
2. He is a funny person.
3. Susie and I are in school.
4. We are sad.
5. What time is it?
6. That Kuhna is only a kit.
7. Where is the train station?
8. I am not well.

[amapup]

Ah, poder and poner! Yipo added that to his list as well, as well as the question answers. He also remembered he knew a little bit about 'querer', too.

alguien - someone
querer - quiero,
haber -
puedo - may I
poder - puedo,
poner -
1. es
2. es
3. estamos
4. estamos
5. es
6. es
7. esta
8. estoy

However, something the teacher wrote on the board did not seem right. He raised on of his wings high - as high as he could, actually. "Perdon, Señor, but shouldn't 'juvenes' be 'jovenes'?"

[Freezair]

"Oh. Uh, yes. Quite right." Hastily, Leonard closed off the "U." "You can see how nervous I am. I've never taught a class before... I'm sorry that I can't be as glib as you need me to be."

[12]

[rayquaza7996]

Hmm. Silver nit her pencil, scribbling down the sentences.

1. My Lucain is Striped.
Ser?
2. He is a funny person.
Estar?
3. Susie and I are in school.
Estar
4. We are sad.
Estar
5. What time is it?
Ser
6. That Kuhna is only a kit.
Ser
7. Where is the train station?
Estar
8. I am not well.
Estar

Silver doubted she was completley correct, but she had tried her best.