quedar means: to stay, to remain
In this lesson we will learn how to conjugate the verb quedar 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 quedado | tú | habías quedado | él/ella/usted | había quedado | nosotros/nosotras | habíamos quedado | vosotros/vosotras | habíais quedado | ellos/ellas/ustedes | habían quedado |
The aim of these lessons is to explain as much as possible the logic behind exceptions and spelling corrections. That way the amount of material which needs to be learned by heart will be minimal and the learning process will be much more effective. It means learning faster and with less effort.
Step by step instructions
| Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto 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. 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:
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| Check out 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 quedar 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 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 in case of the verb quedar it’s easy to see that:
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| Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that quedar 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: quedado. 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 need to take the first person singular form of haber conjugated in Pretérito Imperfecto de Indicativo, which is había. To that we add the Participio quedado to get había quedado:
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 that is habías. To this auxiliary verb we add the Participio quedado (so the exact same word as previously) to get habías quedado:
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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 quedado:
The first person plural has the form habíamos quedado. 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, and to this word we again add the Participio of quedar: quedado to get habíamos quedado:
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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 quedado:
And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form habían quedado. 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 quedar again (quedado) to get habían quedado:
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Hurray! The conjugation is now finished. But don’t end your session yet – it’s important to repeat and practice the material in order to remember it. Check below for next steps.
Next Steps
- To practice this conjugation and test yourself try this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game
- For exercises and examples related to quedar visit our Exercise section
- To see conjugation charts in all tenses for quedar visit the Conjugator
- To explore other learning materials visit the Study section
