The Spanish imperfect has only three irregular verbs: ser, ir, and ver. Of the three, ver is by far the easiest — and the most interesting historically. Its "irregularity" is microscopic. Where the present indicative drops the original -e- of the Latin stem (veo, ves, ve — not veeo, vees, vee), the imperfect keeps it. The result is a paradigm that looks like a perfectly regular -er imperfect except that the stem is ve- rather than v-: veía, veías, veía, veíamos, veíais, veían.
That extra -e- is the whole story. Once you see why it's there, ver stops feeling irregular at all.
The paradigm
| Subject | Form | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| yo | veía | be-Í-a |
| tú | veías | be-Í-as |
| él / ella / usted | veía | be-Í-a |
| nosotros / nosotras | veíamos | be-Í-a-mos |
| vosotros / vosotras | veíais | be-Í-ais |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | veían | be-Í-an |
Six forms, every one with the same skeleton: ve- + -ía- ending. The stress falls on the í in every person. That accent mark is obligatory — it isn't decorative, it's the only thing telling Spanish phonology to stress the second syllable rather than collapsing the e-í into a diphthong (which would push the stress onto the e and turn veía into something like *veia, pronounced VE-ya).
Why ver "keeps" the extra -e-
The Latin verb behind Spanish ver was vidēre, "to see." Over centuries of phonological erosion, the intervocalic -d- fell away, leaving early Spanish forms like veer, veo, vees, vee. In the present indicative, Spanish later contracted vees and vee to ves and ve (modern present). In the infinitive, veer became ver. But in the imperfect, the -e- survived intact because the imperfect ending -ía didn't trigger the same simplification: veía never had a reason to drop the -e- the way ves did.
This is why ver is the only verb in Spanish whose imperfect stem is two letters (ve-) when its present-tense first-person singular has only one (ve-o → stem v- once you strip the -o). Compare it to its closest neighbours:
| Verb | Present (yo) | Stem | Imperfect (yo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| comer | como | com- | comía |
| vivir | vivo | viv- | vivía |
| leer | leo | le- | leía |
| ver | veo | v- (stripped) | veía (ve-) |
For every other verb in the table, the imperfect stem matches what you'd extract by lopping off the -o of the yo form. Ver is the exception: you have to add back the -e- that the present indicative quietly dropped.
If it helps, you can simply treat ver as if its underlying infinitive were veer. Most regular -er imperfects (leer → leía, creer → creía) form their imperfect from the bare stem plus -ía; ver is just the verb where Spanish has trimmed the infinitive to a single syllable but kept the longer stem in the imperfect.
What ver actually means
Before the examples: ver in Spanish covers a wider semantic field than English "see." It includes:
- Physical sight: Veía un coche al fondo de la calle. (I saw a car at the end of the street.)
- Watching: Veía la tele todos los sábados. (I used to watch TV every Saturday.) — ver una película, ver el partido, ver una serie. English uses "watch" here.
- Meeting / spending time with someone: Veía a mi abuela los domingos. (I used to see my grandmother on Sundays.)
- Understanding / perceiving: Ya veía yo que esto no iba a salir bien. (I could already see this wasn't going to turn out well.)
This range means veía appears in storytelling far more often than its English glosses suggest. Any time a learner reaches for the past progressive in English ("I was watching," "I was seeing"), the Spanish equivalent is often a bare veía.
Examples in context
Cuando llamaste, veía un documental sobre el Camino de Santiago.
When you called, I was watching a documentary about the Camino de Santiago.
De niña, veía a mis primos casi todas las semanas.
As a kid, I used to see my cousins almost every week.
Mis abuelos veían el telediario a las tres en punto, sin falta.
My grandparents used to watch the news at three on the dot, without fail.
Veíamos las luces del pueblo desde el balcón.
We could see the lights of the village from the balcony.
¿Vosotros veíais Verano azul cuando erais pequeños?
Did you guys used to watch Verano azul when you were little?
No veían nada con la niebla; tuvieron que parar el coche.
They couldn't see anything because of the fog; they had to stop the car.
That last example is a textbook contrast pair: veían (imperfect, ongoing state of not-seeing) sets the scene, tuvieron (preterite, punctual event) advances the plot. This is the standard rhythm of Spanish narration, and ver in the imperfect appears in it constantly.
The vosotros form: veíais
In peninsular Spanish, the vosotros form is veíais — four letters' worth of vowels in a row (e-í-a-i), pronounced as four distinct syllables: be-Í-a-is. This is one of the more vowel-heavy verb forms in the language, and learners often try to compress it, producing something that sounds like veiais or veyais. The written form requires the accent on í and four separate vocalic slots.
—¿Veíais bien desde vuestros asientos? —No, veíamos fatal.
— Could you guys see okay from your seats? — No, we couldn't see anything.
The Latin American equivalent would use ustedes: ¿Veían bien desde sus asientos? In Spain, veíais is the universal informal plural-you form — among friends, family, and anyone you'd address with tú.
Position of the stress and the obligatory accent
Spanish stress rules put the default stress on the second-to-last syllable of words ending in a vowel, -n, or -s. Without the accent, veia would be parsed as a two-syllable word VE-ya (with the -eia read as a diphthong). The acute accent on í breaks the diphthong and forces a three-syllable reading: ve-Í-a. The accent is mandatory in:
- veía — yo and él/ella
- veías — tú
- veíamos — nosotros
- veíais — vosotros
- veían — ellos/ellas
Six forms, six accents. None is optional, and none of them appears anywhere else in the ver paradigm: the present (veo, ves, ve…), the preterite (vi, viste, vio…), and the future (veré, verás…) all manage without a tilde on the stem. The imperfect is where the accent lives.
Why this matters more than it looks
Veía and veían are extremely high-frequency forms. Ver is one of the twenty most common verbs in Spanish, and most of its imperfect uses fall into the bread-and-butter functions of the tense: describing what someone was watching, recounting habitual viewing, narrating background perception. If you write veia without the accent, you have committed exactly the same error as writing comia for comía — and Spanish autocorrect, grammar checkers, and human readers all flag it instantly.
The good news is that once you've got comer → comía under your belt, ver → veía is just one more verb that follows the same rule. The structural pattern is identical; only the stem is slightly longer than the present-tense form would lead you to predict.
Contrast with the other two irregular imperfects
There are exactly three irregular imperfects in Spanish, and ver is the gentlest of them:
| Verb | Imperfect paradigm | Type of irregularity |
|---|---|---|
| ser | era, eras, era, éramos, erais, eran | Suppletive stem (er- / éra-), unique endings. |
| ir | iba, ibas, iba, íbamos, ibais, iban | Suppletive stem (ib-), takes -aba endings as if it were -ar. |
| ver | veía, veías, veía, veíamos, veíais, veían | Regular -er endings, but stem keeps an extra -e-. |
Compared with the wholesale stem changes in ser and ir, ver's "irregularity" is barely a wrinkle. Most grammar books group all three together for tidiness, but pedagogically ver fits closer to the regular -er pattern than to its two paradigm-mates.
Common mistakes
❌ Vía a mi abuela todos los domingos.
Wrong: the form *vía* doesn't exist. The imperfect of *ver* keeps the -e-: *veía*.
✅ Veía a mi abuela todos los domingos.
Correct: I used to see my grandmother every Sunday.
❌ Cuando era pequeño, veia muchos dibujos animados.
Wrong: missing accent. *Veia* is misspelled — the í always carries a tilde.
✅ Cuando era pequeño, veía muchos dibujos animados.
Correct: When I was little, I used to watch a lot of cartoons.
❌ No veian nada con tanta niebla.
Wrong: missing accent on í. The plural form is *veían*.
✅ No veían nada con tanta niebla.
Correct: They couldn't see anything with so much fog.
❌ ¿Vosotros veiáis la tele juntos?
Wrong: the accent goes on the í, not the á. The form is *veíais*.
✅ ¿Vosotros veíais la tele juntos?
Correct: Did you guys used to watch TV together?
❌ Veíamos el partido cuando se fué la luz.
Wrong: *se fue*, not *se fué*. Monosyllabic *fue* takes no accent — and *veíamos* is correct here.
✅ Veíamos el partido cuando se fue la luz.
Correct: We were watching the match when the power went out.
❌ Cuando era pequeño, veiba la tele cada tarde.
Wrong: *veiba* doesn't exist — the imperfect of *ver* uses *-ía* endings (regular *-er* pattern on stem *ve-*), never the *-aba* endings of *-ar* verbs.
✅ Cuando era pequeño, veía la tele cada tarde.
Correct: veía with the regular -ía ending and obligatory accent.
Key takeaways
- Ver is one of three irregular imperfects in Spanish, alongside ser and ir.
- The paradigm is veía, veías, veía, veíamos, veíais, veían — regular -er endings on the stem ve-.
- The irregularity is tiny: where the present indicative drops the historical -e- of Latin vidēre, the imperfect keeps it.
- The í carries a mandatory accent in every person — the diacritic breaks the e-i diphthong and forces three syllables in veía.
- The peninsular vosotros form is veíais, with the accent on í.
- Ver covers seeing, watching, meeting up with, and understanding — so veía shows up in a much wider range of narration than English "saw" or "was watching."
- The most common error is writing veia/veian/veiais without the accent — a spelling mistake even some natives make, but one that grammar checkers will always catch.
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- Imperfecto de ser: era, eras, eraA2 — The imperfect of ser — era, eras, era, éramos, erais, eran — one of only three irregular imperfects in Spanish, with the accent only on éramos, and the workhorse forms used for past identity, age, time, and description.
- Imperfecto de ir: iba, ibas, ibaA2 — The imperfect of ir — iba, ibas, iba, íbamos, ibais, iban — with the accent only on íbamos, the unaccented peninsular vosotros ibais, and the iba a + infinitivo construction for past intention or unrealized plans.
- Imperfecto: verbos regulares en -er e -irA2 — The regular -er and -ir imperfect — endings -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían, with the obligatory accent on every form, including the peninsular vosotros comíais and vivíais.
- Imperfecto para acciones en cursoA2 — The imperfect for actions in progress at a past moment — the Spanish equivalent of English 'I was reading when…'. Most of the time, the simple imperfect alone is enough; the estar + gerundio form exists but is narrower than English speakers expect.
- verA1 — Full conjugation reference for ver (to see, to watch) — a short verb with a surprising amount of irregularity. Includes the present (veo, ves, ve, vemos, veis, ven), the unaccented preterite (vi, viste, vio), the preserved-vowel imperfect (veía), the irregular past participle (visto), and the key sense distinctions between ver, mirar, and parecer.