Vino means “wine”, but it also means “came”. Ven means “they see”, but it also means “come”. As you can see, the verb Venir is very irregular!
Today we’re going to break Venir down and master it, one form at a time. We’ll go through the top 10 most important forms of Venir and practice how to use each one in real sentences. Plus I’ll show you how to drill them so they become second nature.
Let’s dive in!
By the end of the video, you’ll know Venir’s most essential forms and how to use them naturally in real conversations. Enjoy this free step-by-step video guide!
Let’s start with just a list of the top 10 forms of Venir.
We chose these words based on a frequency analysis of Spanish spoken by native Spanish speakers. According to this analysis, there are about 1000 words that make up 80% of all words spoken in Spanish. And that list of 1000 words includes only 10 forms of Venir. Those forms include 3 present-tense forms, 2 past-tense forms, the infinitive, the imperative, 2 subjunctive forms, and the participle.
You can practice all of these in depth using our free course, which includes thousands of flashcards and other practice materials with all the most essential Spanish verbs.
For now, let’s get an intro to the top 10 forms of Venir:
Let’s start with the present tense. These are three forms that you’ll hear all the time:
Let’s look at some quick examples.
Before we get more practice with this, here’s something to clarify about the verb Venir versus Ir.
The verb Venir means “to come”, not “to go”. These verbs are both used for going somewhere, but Venir (come) is typically used when the place is where the speaker is. For example:
As you can see, we often use “come” along with “here”.
Now compare that to Ir, which means “to go” — typically to a place other than where the speaker is (not “here”):
If you want to dive into the verb Ir, check out this other guide: Top 10 Forms of Ir.
Meanwhile, let’s get a little practice using the Venir forms, viene, vienen, and vienes. Try to predict the Spanish.
ANSWERS:
Let’s move on to the past tense.
Now, if you’ve ever seen the word vino and thought someone was talking about wine… You COULD be right — vino does mean wine. But it also just happens to be a past-tense form of Venir.
The good news is that it’s pretty easy to tell which is which from context. For example, look at this Spanish sentence:
This means “the girl went to the party with wine”. It wouldn’t make sense to say “with came”. So this is pretty clear. But then how about this one:
This clearly isn’t saying “the girl wine to the party with her dog”; it’s “the girl came to the party with her dog.”
So the word vino means “he/she/it came.” Another important past tense verb is vine, which means “I came.”
Let’s look at some examples with both of these:
Let’s get a little practice with this. Try to predict if you need vine or vino.
ANSWERS
Now let’s talk about the infinitive, which is simply venir. This means “to come”, and it’s considered an unconjugated form, which means it doesn’t change no matter who it’s referring to.
Any time you want to say “to come” — as in “I want to come” or “She needs to come”, you’re likely to use venir.
Here’s a simple example:
So we’re just saying “I want” — quiero — and then “to come” — venir.
Let’s try it with a few different people:
In each case, the structure is always the same: A form of Querer followed by venir.
Next, we’ll practice a super important form of Venir, and that’s the participle: venido.
This word is a little bit tricky. It means “come”, but it’s specifically used in sentences like “I have come” or “they have come.”
Notice that in each of these sentences, we have the word “have” before “come”. In Spanish, you’ll specifically use venido when it’s paired with the helping verb Haber.
Let’s look at some quick examples:
In each of those sentences, the word venido doesn’t change based on who has come. Instead, the word right before venido changes. We’re using different forms of Haber — like he, ha, and hemos — to match who it is we’re talking about.
If you want to learn more about how Haber works with participles to talk about past events, check out this guide on the most common forms of Haber.
Now let’s do a quick quiz. I’m going to try to challenge you a little bit; we’ll be practicing both venido and venir. Try to predict which one to use in each sentence.
ANSWERS
Now let’s look at two forms of Venir that might feel a little weird at first: venga and vengan.
These are subjunctive forms. That means we’re no longer talking about what is happening — we’re talking about what someone wants to happen.
Here’s the easiest way to get started with these: Use them after the verb Querer, the verb for “to want.” Let’s look at this sentence:
The Spanish here is tricky. The literal translation here is “Do you want that I come with you”. Here’s another one:
Literally, “I want that they come with me”.
So we use vengan — the subjunctive version of vienen.
Let’s look at a few more examples:
Do you want them to come? → ¿Quieres que ellos vengan?
I won’t quiz you on this one… at least not right now. If you want to get way more practice with subjunctives — not just with Venir, but with all the most important Spanish verbs — head over to our free Spanish course and check out Lesson 26, which explains this use of subjunctives in depth.
These lessons break the subjunctive down step by step so that you actually get it, and you can start using subjunctives in real conversations, just like native Spanish speakers do all the time.
Let’s wrap up by talking about two more essential forms of Venir: the imperatives ven and vengan. These are the words you use when you’re telling someone to come.
In English, it’s very common to say “Come here!” In Spanish, there are two different words for “come” in this context.
Here are some quick examples when you are talking to one person:
Now to speak to more than one person:
As a caution, sometimes you’re going to see the word ven in other contexts. This word can also be used in a totally different verb, Ver; the verb for “to see”. so ven can mean either “come” or “they see”.
Let’s compare:
But the good news is that it’s really easy to tell these apart from context!
Ready to quiz yourself on all these forms of Venir? To do this, just head over to our free Spanish course. You can get some great quizzing on the verb Venir with Lesson 97 in the course. We’ll walk you through core Spanish that real native speakers use every day with step-by-step lessons, flashcards, and spoken practice so that everything actually sticks.