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Trey t 47a7871c38 Add 13 new grammar notes with 1010 exercises from video extraction

Scraped a 4h Spanish fundamentals YouTube video (transcript + OCR on
14810 frames), extracted structured content across 52 chapters, and
generated fill-in-the-blank quizzes for every grammar topic.

- 13 new GrammarNote entries (articles, possessives, demonstratives,
  greetings, poder, al/del, prepositional pronouns, irregular yo,
  stem-changing, stressed possessives, present/future perfect, present
  indicative conjugation)
- 1010 generated exercises across all 36 grammar notes (new + existing)
- Fix tense guide parser to handle unnumbered *Usages* blocks
- Rewrite 6 broken tense guide bodies (imperative, subj pluperfect,
  subj future) with numbered usage format
- Bump courseDataVersion 5→6 with TenseGuide refresh on upgrade
- Add docs/spanish-fundamentals/ with raw transcripts, polished notes,
  structured JSON, and exercise data

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-04-16 08:40:05 -05:00

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22. Stem-Changing Verbs

Source: video

Stem-changing verbs modify their internal vowel in conjugation to "sound better." Spanish has four categories: e→ie, e→i, o→ue, and u→ue. The change occurs in all forms EXCEPT nosotros and vosotros (the "boot" pattern).

Key Rules

The stem change applies to yo, tú, él/ella/usted, ellos/ellas/ustedes — NOT nosotros / vosotros.
Four categories: e → ie, e → i, o → ue, u → ue (only jugar).
Endings stay regular; only the stem vowel changes.
If you see a verb conjugated with ie, i, or ue in the stem, it's likely a stem-changer.

Conjugation / Pattern Tables

empezar (e → ie) — to start

Pronoun	Form
yo	empiezo
tú	empiezas
él/ella	empieza
nosotros	empezamos
vosotros	empezáis
ellos	empiezan

decir (e → i) — to say (also irregular yo: digo)

Pronoun	Form
yo	digo
tú	dices
él/ella	dice
nosotros	decimos
vosotros	decís
ellos	dicen

recordar (o → ue) — to remember

Pronoun	Form
yo	recuerdo
tú	recuerdas
él/ella	recuerda
nosotros	recordamos
vosotros	recordáis
ellos	recuerdan

jugar (u → ue) — to play

Pronoun	Form
yo	juego
tú	juegas
él/ella	juega
nosotros	jugamos
vosotros	jugáis
ellos	juegan

Examples

Spanish	English
Yo empiezo el trabajo a las ocho.	I start work at eight.
Tú dices la verdad.	You tell the truth.
Él recuerda mi nombre.	He remembers my name.
Nosotros jugamos al fútbol.	We play soccer.
Ellos pueden venir mañana.	They can come tomorrow.

Notes & Gotchas

jugo on its own = "juice"; the verb stem-changes to juego to avoid confusion. videojuego = video game.
tener and poder are stem-changers you've already met (tengo/tienes…, puedo/puedes…).
Nosotros/vosotros stay regular — that's the "boot" shape on a conjugation chart.

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