iniciar means: to initiate, to begin, to boot, to commence, to initialize, to start, to start off
Click to see all conjugation charts of iniciar in every tense

In this Spanish conjugation lesson we are going to learn how to conjugate the verb iniciar 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 English phrases 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 inflected forms consist of two words. In Spanish language, there are also simple tenses, where each inflected 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:

• 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

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 iniciar 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 begin by splitting the infinitive into a stem and an ending. It’s 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 iniciar:

• the stem is: inici-
• and the ending is: -ar

Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that iniciar 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: iniciado.

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 need to take the first person singular form of haber conjugated in Presente de Indicativo, which is he. And to that we add the Participio iniciado to get he iniciado:

• yo he iniciado – I have initiated

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. To this auxiliary verb we add the Participio iniciado (so the exact same word as previously) to get has iniciado:

• tú has iniciado – you have initiated

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 iniciado:

• él ha iniciado – he has initiated
• ella ha iniciado – she has initiated
• usted ha iniciado – (formal) you have initiated

The first person plural has the form hemos iniciado. 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, to this word we again add the Participio of iniciar: iniciado to get hemos iniciado:

• nosotros hemos iniciado – we have initiated
• nosotras hemos iniciado – (feminine) we have initiated

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’s habéis. Next, we take the unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get habéis iniciado:

• vosotros habéis iniciado – (plural) you have initiated
• vosotras habéis iniciado – (feminine, plural) you have initiated

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

• ellos han iniciado – they have initiated
• ellas han iniciado – (feminine) they have initiated
• ustedes han iniciado – (formal, plural) you have initiated

¡Ya está! The conjugation is now finished. Put together, the conjugation chart looks like this:

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

Click to see all conjugation charts of iniciar in every tense
But do not end your session yet – it’s important to repeat and practice the material in order to retain it. Check below for suggestions.

Next Steps to Perfection To practice this conjugation and test your skills try 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 iniciar visit our Exercise section To see conjugation charts in all tenses for iniciar visit the Conjugator To explore other learning materials visit the Study section

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