poder means: to be able
Click to see all conjugation charts of poder in every tense

In this Spanish conjugation lesson we are going to learn how to inflect the verb poder in the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A tense of the Subjuntivo mood. It means we will see step by step how to create and translate forms of each grammatical person.

How to translate Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A to English

Note 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 A 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.

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 Subjuntivo A tense, we use the Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo A (Imperfect Subjunctive A) conjugation of haber
• Past Participle, which is always the same in every compound tense for a given verb

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 poder 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 really easy to do – just 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 our verb:

• the stem is: pod-
• and the ending is: -er

Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that poder 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: podido.

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 Subjuntivo A, which is hubiera. And to that we add the Participio podido to get hubiera podido:

• yo hubiera podido – I had been able

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 A tense, and it is hubieras. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio podido (so the exact same word as previously) to get hubieras podido:

• tú hubieras podido – you had been able

Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Pretérito Imperfecto A tense and we utilize the corresponding person’s form (third person singular), namely hubiera. Then we also take the same Participio as for all other persons, and putting them together we get hubiera podido:

• él hubiera podido – he had been able
• ella hubiera podido – she had been able
• usted hubiera podido – (formal) you had been able

The first person plural has the form hubiéramos podido. 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 A tense: hubiéramos. Second, and to this word we again add the Participio of poder: podido to get hubiéramos podido:

• nosotros hubiéramos podido – we had been able
• nosotras hubiéramos podido – (feminine) we had been able

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 Subjuntivo A tense, second person plural, and that’s hubierais. Next, we take our unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get hubierais podido:

• vosotros hubierais podido – (plural) you had been able
• vosotras hubierais podido – (feminine, plural) you had been able

And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form hubieran podido. 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 A conjugation. It is hubieran. We add the Participio of poder again (podido) to get hubieran podido:

• ellos hubieran podido – they had been able
• ellas hubieran podido – (feminine) they had been able
• ustedes hubieran podido – (formal, plural) you had been able

¡Ya está! The conjugation is now done. The final result looks as follows:

yo	hubiera podido	I had been able
tú	hubieras podido	you had been able
él/ella/usted	hubiera podido	he/she/it had been able
nosotros/nosotras	hubiéramos podido	we had been able
vosotros/vosotras	hubierais podido	you had been able
ellos/ellas/ustedes	hubieran podido	they had been able

Click to see all conjugation charts of poder 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 yourself try this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game To see other conjugation lessons for this verb choose another tense: PresentePretéritoImperfectoCondicionalFuturoPretérito Perfecto CompuestoPretérito PluscuamperfectoFuturo PerfectoCondicional PerfectoPretérito Perfecto Compuesto (subjuntivo)Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto B (subjuntivo)Futuro Perfecto (subjuntivo)  For exercises and examples related to poder visit our Exercise section To see conjugation charts in all tenses for poder visit the Conjugator To explore other learning materials visit the Study section

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