When discussing wilderness survival, you will rely heavily on the conditional tense to talk about what you would do. Normally, this tense is formed by attaching endings directly to the infinitive (like compraría).
A few common verbs have irregular stems in the conditional. The endings themselves (-ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían) never change. You just attach them to these new stems.
The irregular stems
Here are the ten most common irregular conditional stems, which group into recognizable patterns.
| Infinitive | Irregular Stem | Example (yo / él / ella / usted) |
|---|
| hacer | har- | haría |
| decir | dir- | diría |
| tener | tendr- | tendría |
| poner | pondr- | pondría |
| salir | saldr- | saldría |
| venir | vendr- | vendría |
| poder | podr- | podría |
| saber | sabr- | sabría |
| querer | querr- | querría |
| haber | habr- | habría |
Shortened stems
Some verbs drop letters from their infinitive to form a shorter stem, like hacer (har-) and decir (dir-).
The "D" stems
For tener, poner, salir, and venir, the vowel from the infinitive ending is replaced with a d.
The dropped vowel stems
The verbs poder, saber, querer, and haber drop the e from their infinitive ending. For querer, this results in a double r (querr-).
A special note on "haber"
Just as hay means "there is" or "there are," the verb haber is used in its singular conditional form (habría) to say "there would be."
| there to be (existential) | haber |