mostrar means: to show
Click to see all conjugation charts of mostrar in every tense

In this conjugation lesson we will learn how to inflect the verb mostrar 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 phrases in English 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 conjugated 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:

• An inflected 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

See 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 will focus on the parts derived from mostrar only here.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 form and you have the ending – one of -ar, -er, -ir. What’s left is the stem.So for our verb:

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

Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that mostrar 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: mostrado.

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 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 mostrado to get había mostrado:

• yo había mostrado – I had shown/had showed

Next, to create the form for the second person singular, we again simply take the second person singular form of haber from the Pretérito Imperfecto de Indicativo tense, and it is habías. To this auxiliary verb we add the Participio mostrado (so the exact same word as previously) to get habías mostrado:

• tú habías mostrado – you had shown/had showed

Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the 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 mostrado:

• él había mostrado – he had shown/had showed
• ella había mostrado – she had shown/had showed
• usted había mostrado – (formal) you had shown/had showed

The first person plural has the form habíamos mostrado. 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 mostrar: mostrado to get habíamos mostrado:

• nosotros habíamos mostrado – we had shown/had showed
• nosotras habíamos mostrado – (feminine) we had shown/had showed

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 that’s habíais. Next, we take our unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get habíais mostrado:

• vosotros habíais mostrado – (plural) you had shown/had showed
• vosotras habíais mostrado – (feminine, plural) you had shown/had showed

And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form habían mostrado. 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 Imperfecto conjugation. It is habían. We add the Participio of mostrar again (mostrado) to get habían mostrado:

• ellos habían mostrado – they had shown/had showed
• ellas habían mostrado – (feminine) they had shown/had showed
• ustedes habían mostrado – (formal, plural) you had shown/had showed

This is it! The conjugation is now done. Put together, the conjugation chart looks like this:

yo	había mostrado	I had shown/had showed
tú	habías mostrado	you had shown/had showed
él/ella/usted	había mostrado	he/she/it had shown/had showed
nosotros/nosotras	habíamos mostrado	we had shown/had showed
vosotros/vosotras	habíais mostrado	you had shown/had showed
ellos/ellas/ustedes	habían mostrado	they had shown/had showed

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

Next Steps to Perfection To practice this conjugation and test your knowledge check this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game To see other conjugation lessons for this verb choose another tense: PresentePretéritoImperfectoCondicionalFuturoPretérito Perfecto CompuestoFuturo PerfectoCondicional PerfectoPretérito Perfecto Compuesto (subjuntivo)Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A (subjuntivo)Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto B (subjuntivo)Futuro Perfecto (subjuntivo)  For exercises and examples related to mostrar visit our Exercise section To see conjugation charts in all tenses for mostrar visit the Conjugator To explore other learning materials visit the Study section

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