Hacer, hecho, and haciendo

Do yourself a favor and start learning your first action verb.

Intro: Join us on a rigorous, step-by-step journey to fluency. I’m Timothy and this is LearnCraft Spanish.

Today we’re going to begin learning the verb Hacer, which means “to do” or “to make”. This is our first action verb, so it’s super exciting — we’re going to start making an enormous variety of sentences entirely in Spanish really soon.

First, let’s learn a fun and handy noun, the word favor, which is spelled exactly like the English word “favor” but it’s pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, fa-VOR. This is a masculine noun. So for example, to say “It was a favor”, you would say Era un favor.

Era un favor.

By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to say things like “I have done them a favor” and “We’re doing you a favor.”

But you can also use this word in a very common and polite idiom: por favor. It literally means “by favor” or “because of favor”, but it’s used to mean “please”. Let’s practice with a couple examples.

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That wasn’t a favor!

¡Eso no era un favor!

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I want you to be here, please.

I want que estés aquí, por favor.

Quiero que estés aquí, por favor.

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All right, now let’s start learning the verb hacer, which means “to make” or “to do”. This is spelled h-a-c-e-r, and the H at the beginning is silent. Hacer.

The simplest way to translate this word is as “to do”, for example “I want to do the work”, or “I want hacer the work”. But in English, we sometimes change this to “make” depending on what it is we’re doing. For example, if what you’re doing is unselfishly giving some things up, you say you’re “making” sacrifices, even though it’s an action and nothing’s really being produced. As another example, if you come home to find that everything has been spilled off your kitchen shelves, you would probably be angry that there’s a mess. There are two questions you might ask: “Who made this mess?” or “Who did this?” Both “make” and “do” are simply hacer in Spanish.

Let’s practice with a few examples.

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I want to do something.

I want hacer algo.

Quiero hacer algo.

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She wants to make it.

Ella lo wants hacer.

Ella lo quiere hacer.

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They want to do her a favor.

Ellos le want hacer un favor.

Ellos le quieren hacer un favor.

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In that last example, we’ve combined an indirect object, Hacer, and the noun favor, which is a beautiful combination you’re going to see quite a bit in our quizzing this week.

Let’s also learn the participle and the gerund for this word. The participle is hecho, spelled H-E-C-H-O, but pronounced hecho. Remember that we can use any of our Haber conjugations before a participle to put the verb in the past. We’ve already done this a lot with estado and sido; for example, “I have been here” is he estado aquí, and “they have been friends” is han sido amigos. Now let’s do this with hecho.

To say “I have done it”, you say lo he hecho. And to say “they have done her a favor”, you say le han hecho un favor.

Le han hecho un favor.

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Let’s practice this a bit.

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We have done something.

Hemos hecho algo.

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Have you done it?

¿Lo has hecho?

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He has done them a favor.

Les ha hecho un favor.

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They have made it.

Lo han hecho.

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You(formal) have done us a favor.

Usted nos ha hecho un favor.

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To add even more variety, let’s learn the gerund. This is a pretty tricky word, haciendo, spelled h-a-c-i-e-n-d-o, kind of like siendo but with an extra syllable: haciendo. We can use this word along with Estar to make some present-tense sentences. Here’s an example:

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I’m doing you a favor.

Te estoy haciendo un favor.

See if you can predict how to say this one:

We are doing it.

Lo estamos haciendo.

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Now in real-life Spanish, it’s not super common to phrase things this way; to use the verb Hacer properly, you’ll need to learn all five of the present tense conjugations, as well as the imperfect past, the preterite, the future, and the subjunctive. But meanwhile, it’s super fun to be able to do a lot of things with just the infinitive, hacer, the participle, hecho, and the gerund, haciendo.

Let’s get a lot more practice with these using today’s final quiz.

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This time I haven’t done anything.

Esta vez no he hecho nada.

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Having been here doesn’t do us any favor.

Haber estado aquí no nos does any favor.

Haber estado aquí no nos hace ningún favor.

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Somebody told them that they didn’t have time.

Alguien les told que no they had tiempo.

Alguien les dijo que no tenían tiempo.

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Everyone wants to do what we have told you.

Todos want hacer lo que te hemos told.

Todos quieren hacer lo que te hemos dicho.

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They have made something for me.

Me han hecho algo.

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Please, look at what they’re doing.

Por favor, look at lo que están haciendo.

Por favor, mira lo que están haciendo.

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He loves us and that’s why he has made that for us.

Nos he loves y por eso nos ha hecho eso.

Nos quiere y por eso nos ha hecho eso.

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You have done her a favor.

Le has hecho un favor.

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Please, we don’t want to do everything.

Por favor, no we want hacer todo.

Por favor, no queremos hacer todo.

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Please, I already have done what you’re doing.

Por favor, yo ya he hecho lo que tú estás haciendo.

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To get more practice with hacer, hecho, and haciendo, go to LCSPodcast.com/38.

This show is brought to you by LearnCraftSpanish.com. The Spanish voice in this episode was our coach Michael Agudelo. Our music was provided by the Seattle Marimba Quartet, and I’m Timothy, encouraging you to do the hard work of learning Spanish. Acquiring a second language is one of the most fulfilling things you can do, so start your fluency journey today at LCSPodcast.com.

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