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I may have been confusing. I am looking for a book of Spanish verb conjugation for English readers. What is the best such book?

My original wording:

My friend's French teacher recommended a particular book* of verb conjugations that she considered the very best of the many such books available.

Is there a book of Spanish verb conjugations that is similarly considered best-in-class?

[*] - Bescherelle Complete Guide to Conjugating 12 000 French Verbs (Hatier)

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I am familiar with the Bescherelle for French verbs (at least the French edition) and I assume you are referring to the "Bescherelle" for Spanish verbs. This book exists in a Spanish and a French edition:

  • Bescherelle - El arte de conjugar en español by Francis Mateo and Antonio José Rojo Sastre. I own the 1994 edition, but it was reprinted in 1998.
  • Bescherelle espagnol: les verbes, published by Hatier in 2008. ISBN 978-2-218-92617-4.

You can browse the French edition on Hatier's website. If you are interested only in the verb tables, it doesn't matter much whether you buy the French or the Spanish edition, but if you also need the grammar section (at the back of the French edition or at the front of the Spanish edition), you should of course buy the version in the language you are most familiar with.

The French edition has some additional information below the verb tables that I don't have in the Spanish edition. For example, it tells you that tener also serves as a model for the conjugation of abstener, atenerse, contener, etc. (Otherwise, I prefer the layout of the 1994 Spanish editon over that of the 2008 French edition.)

I am not aware of an English edition of this book. There are alternatives, which are typically less compact. The closest thing to the Bescherelle book is Spanish Verb Conjugation Quick Reference by Miriam Sánchez and Carla Davis, published by Drizzle Books in 2012. The tables in this book skip all the compound tenses (pretérito perfecto, pretérito pluscuamperfecto, etc.), making the book more compact. However, I had never heard of this book nor its publisher before I started researching this question.

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  • I am indeed interested in a book of Spanish verbs (in English). I didn't mean to confuse the question by mentioning French (just that I know of a French verb book that was recommended).
    – dedded
    Commented Oct 21, 2018 at 20:09
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    @dedded Do you need anything more than just the verb tables? You don't need to know a lot of Spanish to look up verbs in the index in order to find the correct verb table - you just need to understand the names of the tenses. If you also need a different type of content (e.g. use of the tenses?), then the book by Sanchez & Davis is not for you.
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Oct 21, 2018 at 20:49
  • I suppose I need the tables, also an explanation of any patterns or principals that make learning the tables easier. As I'm just beginning, I don't know if it's reasonable to not have tables of the compound tenses you mention. Are those rare enough to ignore (like the subjunctive in English)? Or are they derivable from a set of rules and the basic tables?
    – dedded
    Commented Oct 21, 2018 at 22:09
  • @dedded If you are looking for a compact book that you can easily carry with you, a book with just the tables is fine. You can get the rules or patterns for the tenses from any grammar book. The compound tenses can easily be built with the tenses of haber and the past participle of the verb you are learning.
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Oct 22, 2018 at 8:21

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