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 B 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 B 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 B 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:

• A conjugated form of the auxiliary verb haber. In case of the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto de Subjuntivo B tense, we use the Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo B (Imperfect Subjunctive B) 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’ll focus 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 start by splitting the infinitive into a stem and an ending. It’s really easy to do – simply 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 poder:

• 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.

And now, as we understand how both parts used by this tense are created separately, we can move on with creating the final conjugation forms. In order to create the first person singular form, we need to take the first person singular form of haber conjugated in Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo B, which is hubiese. To that we add the Participio podido to get hubiese podido:

• yo hubiese podido – I had been able

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 Subjuntivo B tense, and it is hubieses. To this auxiliary verb we add the Participio podido (so the exact same word as previously) to get hubieses podido:

• tú hubieses 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 B tense and we use 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 podido:

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

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

• nosotros hubiésemos podido – we had been able
• nosotras hubiésemos 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 B tense, second person plural, and that’s hubieseis. Next, we take the unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get hubieseis podido:

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

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

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

That’s it! The conjugation is now finished. That’s the final result:

yo	hubiese podido	I had been able
tú	hubieses podido	you had been able
él/ella/usted	hubiese podido	he/she/it had been able
nosotros/nosotras	hubiésemos podido	we had been able
vosotros/vosotras	hubieseis podido	you had been able
ellos/ellas/ustedes	hubiesen 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 retain it. Check below for next steps.

Next Steps to Perfection To practice this conjugation and test your skills check 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 A (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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