1. Car-Gar-Zar Verbs

2. Some verbs that end in Car-Gar- Zar CarGarZar TocarLlegarEmpezar PracticarJugar BuscarPagar Sacar

3. Why do we need these special verbs? Lets conjugate the verb Sacar in the preterit tense using REGULAR preterit rules. It would look like the following: Yo SacéNosotros Sacamos Tú Sacaste Él SacóEllos Sacaron Now if you remember your pronunciation rules, you will note that “CA” is a hard sound like in the english word “Cat”. But CE, and CI have soft “s” sounds like “sent” or “Silver”.

4. Therefore, since we want the verb to have the same sound for all the tenses, we need to change the spelling of the FIRST form. Yo SacéNosotros Sacamos Tú Sacaste Él SacóEllos Sacaron So, we are going to replace the cé with the “qué” which in spanish produces that hard “cat” sound. Our conjugation will look like this. Yo SaquéNosotros Sacamos Tú Sacaste Él SacóEllos Sacaron

5. We will follow this pattern for all the Car Verbs. Only the 1 st form will change. Yo PaguéNosotros Pagamos Tú Pagaste Él PagóEllos Pagaron The Gar verbs have the same problem and so we will replace the 1 st form with –gué instead of gé. This will give us our hard “g” as in the word gutter.

6. Empezar Yo EmpeceNosotros Empezamos Tú Empezaste Él EmpezóEllos Empezaron The Zar verbs are a little weird. There isn’t really a good reason for changing the z to a c (since both ze and ce already sound like “s” But nevertheless we will change the form like below:

7. We have looked at the Car Gar Zar rules and now you should practice these rules on the following chart. Remember this chart is NOT a complete list and so you should continue to add verbs to these lists as you come across them this year.

8. Some verbs that end in Car-Gar- Zar CarGarZar TocarLlegarEmpezar PracticarJugar BuscarPagar Sacar