responder means: to answer, to reply, to answer back
Click to see all conjugation charts of responder in every tense

In this Spanish conjugation lesson we are going to learn how to inflect the verb responder in the Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto 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 Perfecto Compuesto to English

Note 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 Perfecto Compuesto 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 Perfecto Compuesto de Subjuntivo tense, we use the Presente de Subjuntivo (Present Subjunctive) conjugation of haber
• Past Participle, which is always the same in every compound tense for a given verb

See the conjugation charts 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 responder 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 begin by splitting the infinitive into a stem and an ending. It’s very 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 in case of our verb:

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

Based on the ending of the infinitive we can recognize that responder 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: respondido.

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 need to take the first person singular form of haber conjugated in Presente de Subjuntivo, which is haya. To that we add the Participio respondido to get haya respondido:

• yo haya respondido – I have answered

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

• tú hayas respondido – you have answered

Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Presente tense and we use the corresponding person’s form (third person singular), namely haya. Then we also take the same Participio as for all other persons, and putting them together we get haya respondido:

• él haya respondido – he have answered
• ella haya respondido – she have answered
• usted haya respondido – (formal) you have answered

The first person plural has the form hayamos respondido. 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 Presente de Subjuntivo tense: hayamos. Second, to this word we again add the Participio of responder: respondido to get hayamos respondido:

• nosotros hayamos respondido – we have answered
• nosotras hayamos respondido – (feminine) we have answered

Again, let’s do the same for the second person plural. We have to get the inflected form of the verb haber in the Presente de Subjuntivo tense, second person plural, and that’s hayáis. Next, we take our unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get hayáis respondido:

• vosotros hayáis respondido – (plural) you have answered
• vosotras hayáis respondido – (feminine, plural) you have answered

And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form hayan respondido. 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 Presente conjugation. It is hayan. We add the Participio of responder again (respondido) to get hayan respondido:

• ellos hayan respondido – they have answered
• ellas hayan respondido – (feminine) they have answered
• ustedes hayan respondido – (formal, plural) you have answered

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

yo	haya respondido	I have answered
tú	hayas respondido	you have answered
él/ella/usted	haya respondido	he/she/it have answered
nosotros/nosotras	hayamos respondido	we have answered
vosotros/vosotras	hayáis respondido	you have answered
ellos/ellas/ustedes	hayan respondido	they have answered

Click to see all conjugation charts of responder 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 suggestions.

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 Pluscuamperfecto A (subjuntivo)Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto B (subjuntivo)Futuro Perfecto (subjuntivo)  For exercises and examples related to responder visit our Exercise section To see conjugation charts in all tenses for responder visit the Conjugator To explore other learning materials visit the Study section

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