Querer is one of the most important irregular verbs in Spanish — it appears in virtually every GCSE and A-Level task.
Practice querer free →Querer means 'to want', and — used with a person — 'to love'. It is indispensable from your very first conversations: quiero un café (I want a coffee), quiero aprender español (I want to learn Spanish). It is a stem-changing verb, with e shifting to ie in the present (quiero, quieres, quiere), and it has an irregular preterite (quise, quiso). Like poder, it is usually followed by an infinitive or a noun, so it slots easily into sentences. The conditional querría and the polite quisiera ('I would like') are worth knowing for ordering and requesting politely — small touches that read as genuinely fluent at GCSE and A-Level.
Quick facts
Querer (to want) is a high-frequency irregular -er verb.
Real sentences across different tenses — the kind of thing you'd actually say or write.
Desiring a noun: quiero un helado (I want an ice cream), ¿qué quieres? (what do you want?).
Querer + infinitive: quiero salir (I want to go out), no quiere estudiar (he doesn't want to study).
With people, querer means to love: te quiero (I love you), used for family, friends and partners.
Quisiera and querría mean 'I would like' — softer and more polite than quiero, ideal for ordering: quisiera un café.
Fixed expressions worth knowing — they come up in listening, reading and writing tasks.
Idiomatic expressions
In the preterite, quise = tried to; no quise = refused. This is a common essay nuance worth knowing for Grade 9. The stem in the preterite is quis-: quise, quisiste, quiso…
Stem-changing (e→ie) in all forms except nosotros and vosotros.
Completely irregular stem: quis-. Use the standard preterite -er endings on this stem.
Irregular future stem: querr-. Apply the regular future endings to querr-.
Uses the same irregular stem as the future: querr-.
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 querer now →Three questions. Press Enter to check each answer.
yo: quiero, tú: quieres, él: quiere, nosotros: queremos, vosotros: queréis, ellos: quieren
Querer is irregular.
Use querer in multiple tenses to show range — present, preterite and future at minimum. This is a key criterion for higher GCSE marks.
Verbs that are easy to confuse with querer or that behave like it.
This reference is written for UK GCSE and A-Level Spanish learners and their teachers. It is designed for exam revision: every form is checked against standard conjugation rules, and the examples reflect the registers and topics that come up in the AQA, Edexcel and Eduqas specifications. Querer is a high-frequency verb and appears often in exam papers. For active recall, use the free practice tool rather than only reading the tables.