carecer means: to be short of, to lack
Click to see all conjugation charts of carecer in every tense

In this conjugation lesson we are going to learn how to inflect the verb carecer in the Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto tense of the Indicativo mood. It means we will see step by step how to create and translate forms of each grammatical person.

How to translate Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto to English

Notice that the phrases in English provided below next to each conjugation are not direct translations from Spanish to English. They are usually the closest general equivalents. The example differences are:

• In Spanish conjugation, there is the form usted in the third person singular. But this person does not translate to the English third person singular. It translates to the so called formal you and uses the inflected form which is most often represented as he/she/it in English conjugation charts.
• Similar situation happens in the third person plural, where ustedes translates to the English plural formal you but uses the form which corresponds to the they form in English.
• Tenses are used differently in Spanish and English, so the actual translation should always take into account the context and focus on translating the meaning, not just words.
• In both languages each verb may have multiple meanings and not every meaning translates directly to the other language. Here also, the context and focusing on the particular meaning helps to create the most accurate translation.

Step by step instructions

Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto is a compound tense (Spanish: compuesto). It means that all of its conjugated forms consist of two words. In Spanish language, there are also simple tenses, where each inflected verb form is one word long.

A compound tense is indicated by the ending of the auxiliary verb, not by the ending of the main verb, which is the case in Spanish simple tenses.In the compound tenses, every person’s form consist of two parts:

• An inflected form of the auxiliary verb haber. In case of the Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto de Indicativo tense, we use the Presente de Indicativo (Present) conjugation of haber
• Past Participle, which is always the same in every compound tense for a given verb

Refer to 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’re focusing on the parts derived from carecer only in this lesson.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 begin by splitting the infinitive into a stem and an ending. It’s very easy to do – just remove two letters from the end of the infinitive form to get the ending – one of -ar, -er, -ir. What’s left is the stem.So for our verb:

• the stem is: carec-
• and the ending is: -er

Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that carecer belongs to the -er verb group. This group, in turn, uses the -ido ending in its Participio form. Putting all that together, our Participio is: carecido.

And now, as we understand how both parts used by this tense are created separately, we can move on with creating the final conjugation forms. In order to create the first person singular form, we need to take the first person singular form of haber conjugated in Presente de Indicativo, which is he. To that we add the Participio carecido to get he carecido:

• yo he carecido – I have been short of

Next, to create the form for the second person singular, we again simply take the second person singular form of haber from the Presente de Indicativo tense, and that is has. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio carecido (so the exact same word as previously) to get has carecido:

• tú has carecido – you have been short of

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 carecido:

• él ha carecido – he has been short of
• ella ha carecido – she has been short of
• usted ha carecido – (formal) you have been short of

The first person plural has the form hemos carecido. 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 carecer: carecido to get hemos carecido:

• nosotros hemos carecido – we have been short of
• nosotras hemos carecido – (feminine) we have been short of

Again, let’s do the same for the second person plural. We need to get the conjugated form of the verb haber in the Presente de Indicativo tense, second person plural, and it is habéis. Next, we take the unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get habéis carecido:

• vosotros habéis carecido – (plural) you have been short of
• vosotras habéis carecido – (feminine, plural) you have been short of

And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form han carecido. 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 carecer again (carecido) to get han carecido:

• ellos han carecido – they have been short of
• ellas han carecido – (feminine) they have been short of
• ustedes han carecido – (formal, plural) you have been short of

Hurray! The conjugation is now complete. That’s the final result:

yo	he carecido	I have been short of
tú	has carecido	you have been short of
él/ella/usted	ha carecido	he/she/it has been short of
nosotros/nosotras	hemos carecido	we have been short of
vosotros/vosotras	habéis carecido	you have been short of
ellos/ellas/ustedes	han carecido	they have been short of

Click to see all conjugation charts of carecer in every tense
But do not end your session yet – it is very important to repeat and practice the material in order to retain it. Check below for next steps.

Next Steps to Perfection To practice this conjugation and test yourself check this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game To see other conjugation lessons for this verb choose another tense: PresentePretéritoImperfectoCondicionalFuturoPretérito PluscuamperfectoFuturo PerfectoCondicional PerfectoPretérito Perfecto Compuesto (subjuntivo)Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A (subjuntivo)Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto B (subjuntivo)Futuro Perfecto (subjuntivo)  For exercises and examples related to carecer visit our Exercise section To see conjugation charts in all tenses for carecer visit the Conjugator To explore other learning materials visit the Study section

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