morder means: to bite
In this lesson we are going to learn how to conjugate the verb morder in the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto B tense of the Subjuntivo mood. It means we will see step by step how to get the following conjugation:
yo | hubiese mordido | I had bitten |
tú | hubieses mordido | you had bitten |
él/ella/usted | hubiese mordido | he/she/it had bitten |
nosotros/nosotras | hubiésemos mordido | we had bitten |
vosotros/vosotras | hubieseis mordido | you had bitten |
ellos/ellas/ustedes | hubiesen mordido | they had bitten |
How to translate Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto B 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 Pluscuamperfecto B 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 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:
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Check out the conjugation charts 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 morder 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 start by splitting the infinitive into a stem and an ending. It’s 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 morder:
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Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that morder belongs to the -er verb group. This group, in turn, uses the -ido ending in its Participio form. Putting all that together, our Participio is: mordido. 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 Subjuntivo B, which is hubiese. To that we add the Participio mordido to get hubiese mordido:
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 Subjuntivo B tense, and that is hubieses. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio mordido (so the exact same word as previously) to get hubieses mordido:
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Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Pretérito Imperfecto B tense and we utilize the corresponding person’s form (third person singular), namely hubiese. Then we also take the same Participio as for all other persons, and putting them together we get hubiese mordido:
The first person plural has the form hubiésemos mordido. 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 Subjuntivo B tense: hubiésemos. Second, to this word we again add the Participio of morder: mordido to get hubiésemos mordido:
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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 Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo B tense, second person plural, and it’s hubieseis. Next, we take our unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get hubieseis mordido:
And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form hubiesen mordido. 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 B conjugation. It is hubiesen. We add the Participio of morder again (mordido) to get hubiesen mordido:
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¡Ya está! 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 suggestions.
Next Steps
- To practice this conjugation and test your knowledge try this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game
- For exercises and examples related to morder visit our Exercise section
- To see conjugation charts in all tenses for morder visit the Conjugator
- To explore other learning materials visit the Study section