Español 30

Lección Estructuras Práctica Asignación

7.05 Buceando en las Islas Galápagos

---

El pasado perfecto

Now that you are able to use the present perfect tense, let's learn the past perfect. Once you know one, the other is easy!

The past perfect tense views an action or state as having occurred—and been completed—at a time prior to another past action, state, or time. Here is a link where you can see how this tense is used in Enlgish: past perfect

Mi papá me había dicho que sería una buena idea llevar ropa de verano.	My father had told me that it would be a good idea to take summer clothes.
Pero no había ido nunca a las islas Galápagos hasta hace unos meses.	But I never had gone to the Galápagos until a few months ago.

Remember that the perfect tenses (in this lesson we will talk only about the past perfect) are compound tenses, meaning that they are made up of two parts. There is both a helping verb (haber) and a past participle.

Let's take a look at how to form the past perfect tense. Again, just like with the present perfect, there are two parts.

• The helping verb haber in the correct form of the past (imperfect) tense.
• The masculine singular form of the past participle.

Let's review the imperfect tense forms of haber.

Haber
Yo	había	Nosotros	habíamos
Tú	habías	Vosotros	habíais
El / Ella / Ud.	había	Ellos(as) / Uds.	habían

Next, add the participle. This you know how to do from the lesson on the present perfect, but let's take a look at it again. To form the participle of a verb, take the last two letters off the verb ending, and add –ado for –ar verbs and –ido for –er and –ir verbs.

Infinitive	Past Participle
probar	Respuesta probado Respuesta
servir	Respuesta servido Respuesta

Review

Let's also review the irregular participles. These are the same irregulars from our lesson on the present perfect. I'm sure that most of these look familiar and you are already good at remembering them.

Keep practicing and reviewing!

Make sure you know the following irregular past participles!