Los participios pasivos (I): irregular participles
nderstanding what passive participles are in the Spanish language and how they are formed is of critical importance for learning the language, as they are widely used and serve many functions: participles are part of compound tenses, the passive voice, and are also used as adjectives. The formation of regular participles is quite simple, as we saw in the article where we introduced the pretérito perfecto: we remove the verb endings (-ar, -er, -ir) to obtain the verb stem, and then add the suffix -ado for verbs ending in -ar and the suffix -ido for verbs ending in -er and -ir.
Amar, amado.
Comer, comido.
Vivir, vivido.
Easy, right? I, as a language learner, when I come across something so simple, I suspect there’s more to it. And yes, there is more to it. There are irregular participles that we must learn by heart because there is no rule to follow that explains their irregularity. The good news is that, in the long run, you learn them, because many of these irregular participles are very frequently used in the language. The bad news is that, during language acquisition, irregular participles lead to mistakes. But, as we will see, there’s no need to be afraid of making mistakes.
Mistakes are part of acquiring a foreign language. And I know, because I’ve experienced it firsthand, that making mistakes while speaking or having to dig through your brain to find the right expression can be an unpleasant experience. But mistakes, in fact, are expected and systematic; that is, we know what mistakes a person learning a particular language will make based on the language(s) they already speak. Irregular participles in Spanish, for example, are a source of mistakes for young children acquiring the language as their mother tongue. It’s quite common, for example, for children to learn to say “roto”, which is the passive participle of the verb romper (to break), and then go through a stage where they say “rompido”, which would be the logical participle of romper if we follow the rule for forming participles. This doesn’t mean they’ve unlearned it, but that they’ve started to internalize the rules of grammar. It happened to me when I was learning German: the verb fahren in German, which means to go somewhere in a vehicle, has an irregular participle: gefahren. The first few times I had to use the participle of this verb, I used gefahren, but then I went through a stage where I said gefährt. Because that was, for me, the logical participle of the verb fahren according to the rules for forming participles in German. Why am I telling you this? So that you won’t be afraid to say rompido, decido, hacido, etc. When you are able to say rompido spontaneously, you will have crossed a normal and expected barrier in acquiring the Spanish language.
That being said, and as I mentioned earlier, there are no rules to systematize the formation of irregular participles in Spanish, so, bad news, you have to memorize them. Below is a list of verbs that have irregular participles and are very frequently used in the language.
Decir: dicho
Hacer: hecho
Ver: visto
Escribir: escrito
Abrir: abierto
Poner: puesto
Romper: roto
Volver: vuelto
Morir: muerto
Resolver: resuelto
Devolver: devuelto
Imprimir: impreso
Cubrir: cubierto
Freír: frito
Satisfacer: satisfecho
Descubrir: descubierto
Componer: compuesto
Exponer: expuesto
Proponer: propuesto
Describir: descrito
I believe this has been enough information for an article. In the next one, we will look at other functions of participles in Spanish, and their agreement in grammatical gender and number with nouns when they form part of the passive voice or when used as adjectives. If you have any questions, feel free to write to me. Thanks for reading!
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