As the title says. An "O" before the last syllable (-er or -ir) is often turned into "ue" when conjugating, e.g. puede, duerme, vuele.
Verbs ending in -ar don't: nota, vota, ...
But poner, comer, etc. ends in -er, so why aren't they puene, cueme?
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2Also, note that "vuele" comes from "volar", so some verbs ending with "ar" also change the "o". Soñar > sueño, tronar > trueno. And also with "ir": morir > muero. So the question could be just why sometimes an "o" syllable changes to "ue" in verbs and others don't.– CharlieCommented Apr 4, 2018 at 11:52
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AFAIK this alternation is much more common among -er and -ir verbs, which are also on the whole more irregular. But @Charlie is right. You'll find this outside verbs too (e.g. tiempo vs. temporal).– pablodf76Commented Apr 4, 2018 at 12:41
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1don't expect to apply rules on how to conjugate words in spanish, even for a spanish native speaker, sometimes is hard to find how a words is an specific tense (grab a dictionary)– MikeCommented Apr 4, 2018 at 15:05
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1I agree with @Mike. The rule is "there are no rules". Listen and read a lot and you will get it, but don't try to memorize rules. That will only keep you from learning. (my 2 cents)– DGaleanoCommented Apr 4, 2018 at 18:56
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2 Answers
The verbs that alternate between o and ue (like the verbs that alternate between e and ie/u) are the result of a phonetic change that happened to the short /o/ and /e/ in Latin as it transitioned to modern languages (the vowels in Latin could be either long or short).
For the most part, if you know the Latin word has a short vowel, you can predict that the change will happen, although it's not a perfect system (correr or responder should change, but don't, at least not in Spanish).
answered Apr 4, 2018 at 12:32
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2lol... expecting to apply rules to know how the words are conjugated, is actually the opposite, you see how they are conjugated to understand their origin,– MikeCommented Apr 4, 2018 at 15:03
There is a thing called irregularity in languages, that means that some of the members of a group, in this case the group of verbs, don't follow the regular canonical pattern.
