The present tense (el presente) of the indicative mood is very similar in usage to the English present tense. The one difference is that in Spanish, “I eat” and “I am eating” are both translated as (yo) como. If you want to emphasize the fact that you are eating right now, you can use the Spanish present progressive, yo estoy comiendo, covered later in the chapter.

In the present tense, regular verbs are conjugated by dropping the infinitive ending and adding the following endings: