A verb is the action word in a sentence. It is the word that says what happens, discusses an action, or describes a state of being.

All Spanish verbs have to be conjugated - they have different forms depending on what the subject is. In English, we only have a separate conjugation for the third person singular of a verb: I sing becomes he sings. The verb to be has three conjugations: I am, you are, he is. 

In Spanish, verbs have 6 conjugations, one for each subject pronoun (I, you, he, etc.)

Verbs come in many varieties: different tenses (present, future), voices, and moods. There are different conjugations for each variety. But don't get discouraged! There are patterns to the conjugations of most verbs.
 

5 categories of verbs:

-AR verbs, -ER verbs, and -IR verbs are regular verbs. Regular verbs that end in these letters are all conjugated the same way in all of the tenses. Once you learn how to conjugate one regular verb in each category, you can conjugate the majority of Spanish verbs.

A fourth category is known as stem-changing verbs, or verbs with spelling changes. These verbs take the same endings as regular verbs, but their root changes depending on the subject.

The final category is irregular verbs. These are verbs whose conjugations are unique to them, so you must memorize their conjugations separately. One of the most common irregular Spanish verbs is Ir (to go).

The Everything Spanish Verb Book, by Laura K. Lawless
Introductory lessons on Spanish verb tenses and moods, 250 verb conjugation tables, a list of 1,000 similarly-conjugated verbs, and a Spanish-English verb dictionary.

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