Cantar means 'to sing', and it is a textbook regular -ar verb that appears in hobbies, music and free-time topics. Canto en un coro (I sing in a choir), cantamos juntos (we sang together). Because it is perfectly regular, teachers often use it to demonstrate the -ar pattern, which makes it doubly useful: handy in its own right and a clean model for hundreds of similar verbs. The expression cantar las cuarenta ('to give someone a piece of your mind') is a fun idiom to know. As ever with -ar verbs, mind the preterite accents (canté, cantó).
Quick facts
Cantar (to sing) is a regular -ar verb.
Real sentences across different tenses — the kind of thing you'd actually say or write.
Canto en la ducha (I sing in the shower).
Cantamos juntos (we sing together).
A clean -ar verb for demonstrating the pattern.
Cantar las cuarenta (to give someone a telling-off).
Fixed expressions worth knowing — they come up in listening, reading and writing tasks.
Idiomatic expressions
cantar is a regular -ar verb — it follows the standard -ar pattern in every tense. That makes it a good one to drill: if you know cantar, you know the template for all regular -ar verbs.
Type conjugations from memory and get instant feedback. That's how you actually build the automatic recall the exam needs — not from reading tables.
Practice cantar now →Three questions, no account needed. Type the form, then press Enter or tap Check.
yo: canto, tú: cantas, él: canta, nosotros: cantamos, vosotros: cantáis, ellos: cantan
The past participle is cantado (he cantado) and the gerund is cantando (estoy cantando).
Verbs that are easy to confuse with cantar or that behave like it.
Cantar is on the AQA, Edexcel and Eduqas GCSE Spanish vocabulary lists. Compare the exam boards.
Written by Daniel Holmes for GCSE & A-Level Spanish students.