escuchar means: to listen
In this lesson we will learn how to conjugate the verb escuchar in the Condicional Perfecto tense of the Indicativo mood. It means we will see step by step how to get the following conjugation:
yo | habría escuchado | I would have listened |
tú | habrías escuchado | you would have listened |
él/ella/usted | habría escuchado | he/she/it would have listened |
nosotros/nosotras | habríamos escuchado | we would have listened |
vosotros/vosotras | habríais escuchado | you would have listened |
ellos/ellas/ustedes | habrían escuchado | they would have listened |
How to translate Condicional Perfecto to English
Note that the English phrases in the third column of the above conjugation table 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
Condicional Perfecto 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:
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Check out 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 escuchar 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 – simply remove two letters from the end of the infinitive form and you have the ending – one of -ar, -er, -ir. What’s left is the stem. So for escuchar:
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Based on the ending of the infinitive we can recognize that escuchar 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: escuchado. 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 simply take the first person singular form of haber conjugated in Condicional Simple de Indicativo, which is habría. To that we add the Participio escuchado to get habría escuchado:
Next, to create the form for the second person singular, we again need to take the second person singular form of haber from the Condicional Simple de Indicativo tense, and it is habrías. To this auxiliary verb we add the Participio escuchado (so the exact same word as previously) to get habrías escuchado:
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Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Condicional tense and we utilize the corresponding person’s form (third person singular), namely habría. Then we also take the same Participio as for all other persons, and putting them together we get habría escuchado:
The first person plural has the form habríamos escuchado. 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 Condicional Simple de Indicativo tense: habríamos. Second, and to this word we again add the Participio of escuchar: escuchado to get habríamos escuchado:
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Again, let’s do the same for the second person plural. We have to get the conjugated form of the verb haber in the Condicional Simple de Indicativo tense, second person plural, and it is habríais. Next, we take our unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get habríais escuchado:
And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form habrían escuchado. 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 Condicional conjugation. It is habrían. We add the Participio of escuchar again (escuchado) to get habrían escuchado:
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¡Ya está! The conjugation is now complete. But don’t end your session yet – it is very important to repeat and practice the material in order to remember it. Check below for next steps.
Next Steps
- To practice this conjugation and test your knowledge check this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game
- For exercises and examples related to escuchar visit our Exercise section
- To see conjugation charts in all tenses for escuchar visit the Conjugator
- To explore other learning materials visit the Study section