creer means: to believe
In this lesson we will learn how to conjugate the verb creer 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 creído | I have believed |
| tú | has creído | you have believed |
| él/ella/usted | ha creído | he/she/it has believed |
| nosotros/nosotras | hemos creído | we have believed |
| vosotros/vosotras | habéis creído | you have believed |
| ellos/ellas/ustedes | han creído | they have believed |
How to translate Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto to English
Note that the English phrases in the third column of the above conjugation chart are not direct translations from Spanish to English. They are usually the closest general equivalents. The example differences are:- In Spanish, 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 conjugated 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:
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| 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 are focusing on the parts derived from creer 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 need to start by splitting the infinitive into a stem and an ending. It’s really easy to do – just 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 for our verb:
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| Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that creer belongs to the -er verb group. This group, in turn, uses the -ído ending in its Participio form. Putting all that together, our Participio is: creído. Now, as we understand how both parts used by this tense are created separately, we can 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. And to that we add the Participio creído to get he creído:
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. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio creído (so the exact same word as previously) to get has creído:
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Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Presente tense and we utilize 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 creído:
The first person plural has the form hemos creído. 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 creer: creído to get hemos creído:
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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 creído:
And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form han creído. 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 creer again (creído) to get han creído:
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This is it! The conjugation is now complete. But don’t end your session yet – it’s important to repeat and practice the material in order to retain it. Check below for next steps.
Next Steps
- To practice this conjugation and test your skills try this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game
- For exercises and examples related to creer visit our Exercise section
- To see conjugation charts in all tenses for creer visit the Conjugator
- To explore other learning materials visit the Study section
