Click to see all conjugation charts of iniciar in every tense
In this Spanish conjugation lesson we are going to learn how to inflect the verb iniciar in the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto 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 Pluscuamperfecto 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 Pluscuamperfecto 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.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:
- A conjugated form of the auxiliary verb haber. In case of the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto de Indicativo tense, we use the Pretérito Imperfecto de Indicativo (Imperfect) conjugation of haber
- Past Participle, which is always the same in every compound tense for a given verb
- the stem is: inici-
- and the ending is: -ar
And 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 Pretérito Imperfecto de Indicativo, which is había. To that we add the Participio iniciado to get había iniciado:
- yo había iniciado – I had initiated
- tú habías iniciado – you had initiated
- él había iniciado – he had initiated
- ella había iniciado – she had initiated
- usted había iniciado – (formal) you had initiated
- nosotros habíamos iniciado – we had initiated
- nosotras habíamos iniciado – (feminine) we had initiated
- vosotros habíais iniciado – (plural) you had initiated
- vosotras habíais iniciado – (feminine, plural) you had initiated
- ellos habían iniciado – they had initiated
- ellas habían iniciado – (feminine) they had initiated
- ustedes habían iniciado – (formal, plural) you had initiated
This is it! The conjugation is now complete. That’s the final result:
yo | había iniciado | I had initiated |
tú | habías iniciado | you had initiated |
él/ella/usted | había iniciado | he/she/it had initiated |
nosotros/nosotras | habíamos iniciado | we had initiated |
vosotros/vosotras | habíais iniciado | you had initiated |
ellos/ellas/ustedes | habían iniciado | they had initiated |
But do not end your session yet – it’s important to repeat and practice the material in order to retain it. Check below for next steps.
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