ahorrar means: to retrench, to save
In this lesson we will learn how to conjugate the verb ahorrar in the Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto tense of the Indicativo mood. It means we will see step by step how to create the following conjugation:
| yo | he ahorrado | tú | has ahorrado | él/ella/usted | ha ahorrado | nosotros/nosotras | hemos ahorrado | vosotros/vosotras | habéis ahorrado | ellos/ellas/ustedes | han ahorrado |
The objective of our lessons is to show as much as possible the logic behind exceptions and spelling corrections. That way the amount of stuff which needs to be learned by heart will be minimal and the learning process will be more effective. It means learning quicker and with less effort.
Step by step instructions
| Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto is a compound tense (Spanish: compuesto). It means that all of its inflected forms consist of two words. In Spanish language, there are also simple tenses, where each conjugated verb form is one word long. In a compound tense the endings of the auxiliary verb change, not the endings of the main verb, which is the case in Spanish simple tenses. In the compound tenses, every person’s form consist of two parts:
|
| See the conjugation charts and this haber conjugation lesson to learn how to conjugate the auxiliary verb haber. That’s a separate topic, so for brevity we’ll focus on the parts derived from ahorrar only here. In order to create the Participio form, we need a stem and an ending. We use the stem of the infinitive of the main verb, and a single ending, which depends on the conjugation group of the main verb. So we need to begin by splitting the infinitive into a stem and an ending. It’s very easy to do – simply remove two letters from the end of the infinitive to get the ending – one of -ar, -er, -ir. What’s left is the stem. So in case of the verb ahorrar it’s easy to see that:
|
| Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that ahorrar belongs to the -ar verb group. This group, in turn, uses the -ado ending in its Participio form. Putting all that together, our Participio is: ahorrado. And now, as we understand how both parts used by this tense are created separately, let’s proceed with creating the final conjugation forms. |
In order to create the first person singular form, we simply take the first person singular form of haber conjugated in Presente de Indicativo, which is he. To that we add the Participio ahorrado to get he ahorrado:
Next, to create the form for the second person singular, we again need to take the second person singular form of haber from the Presente de Indicativo tense, and that is has. To this auxiliary verb we add the Participio ahorrado (so the exact same word as previously) to get has ahorrado:
|
Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Presente tense and we use the corresponding person’s form (third person singular), namely ha. Then we also take the same Participio as for all other persons, and putting them together we get ha ahorrado:
The first person plural has the form hemos ahorrado. It’s created by following the same logic as in the other persons. We first take the form of the first person plural from haber conjugation in the Presente de Indicativo tense: hemos. Second, and to this word we again add the Participio of ahorrar: ahorrado to get hemos ahorrado:
|
Again, let’s do the same for the second person plural. We need to get the inflected form of the verb haber in the Presente de Indicativo tense, second person plural, and that’s habéis. Next, we take the unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get habéis ahorrado:
And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form han ahorrado. We create it in the exact same manner as in all the other grammatical persons. We need the third person plural of haber first, from its Presente conjugation. It is han. We add the Participio of ahorrar again (ahorrado) to get han ahorrado:
|
Hurray! The conjugation is now complete. But don’t end your session yet – it’s important to repeat and practice the material in order to remember it. Check below for suggestions.
Next Steps
- To practice this conjugation and test your skills try this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game
- For exercises and examples related to ahorrar visit our Exercise section
- To see conjugation charts in all tenses for ahorrar visit the Conjugator
- To explore other learning materials visit the Study section
Report a mistake | Give feedback
Thank you very much for making the effort to contact us
We strive to provide the highest quality content and we greatly appreciate even the smallest suggestions.
