intentar means: to try
In this lesson we will learn how to conjugate the verb intentar in the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto tense of the Indicativo mood. It means we will see step by step how to create the following conjugation:
| yo | había intentado | tú | habías intentado | él/ella/usted | había intentado | nosotros/nosotras | habíamos intentado | vosotros/vosotras | habíais intentado | ellos/ellas/ustedes | habían intentado |
The objective of this series is to teach as much as possible the logic behind spelling corrections, exceptions and special cases. That way the amount of stuff which needs to be learned by heart will be minimized and the learning process will be much more effective. It means learning faster and with much less effort.
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 conjugated 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:
|
| 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 intentar 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 very easy to do – simply 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 intentar:
|
| Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that intentar 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: intentado. 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. And to that we add the Participio intentado to get había intentado:
Next, to create the form for the second person singular, we again need to take the second person singular form of haber from the Pretérito Imperfecto de Indicativo tense, and that is habías. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio intentado (so the exact same word as previously) to get habías intentado:
|
Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Pretérito Imperfecto tense and we use the corresponding person’s form (third person singular), namely había. Then we also take the same Participio as for all other persons, and putting them together we get había intentado:
The first person plural has the form habíamos intentado. 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 Pretérito Imperfecto de Indicativo tense: habíamos. Second, to this word we again add the Participio of intentar: intentado to get habíamos intentado:
|
Again, let’s do the same for the second person plural. We have to get the inflected form of the verb haber in the Pretérito Imperfecto de Indicativo tense, second person plural, and it is habíais. Next, we take the unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get habíais intentado:
And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form habían intentado. 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 Pretérito Imperfecto conjugation. It is habían. We add the Participio of intentar again (intentado) to get habían intentado:
|
Hurray! The conjugation is now done. 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 suggestions.
Next Steps
- To practice this conjugation and test yourself try this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game
- For exercises and examples related to intentar visit our Exercise section
- To see conjugation charts in all tenses for intentar visit the Conjugator
- To explore other learning materials visit the Study section
Report a mistake | Give feedback
Thank you very much for making the effort to contact us
We strive to provide the highest quality content and we greatly appreciate even the smallest suggestions.
