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

In this conjugation lesson we will see how to inflect the verb responder 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 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 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 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

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’ll 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 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 and you have the ending – one of -ar, -er, -ir. What’s left is the stem.So in case of the verb responder it’s easy to see that:

• 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, 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. To that we add the Participio respondido to get había respondido:

• yo había respondido – I had answered

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 Indicativo tense, and that is habías. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio respondido (so the exact same word as previously) to get habías respondido:

• tú habías respondido – you had answered

Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Imperfecto tense and we utilize 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 respondido:

• él había respondido – he had answered
• ella había respondido – she had answered
• usted había respondido – (formal) you had answered

The first person plural has the form habíamos 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 Pretérito Imperfecto de Indicativo tense: habíamos. Second, and to this word we again add the Participio of responder: respondido to get habíamos respondido:

• nosotros habíamos respondido – we had answered
• nosotras habíamos respondido – (feminine) we had answered

Again, let’s do the same for the second person plural. We have to get the conjugated form of the verb haber in the Pretérito Imperfecto de Indicativo tense, second person plural, and it’s habíais. Next, we take the unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get habíais respondido:

• vosotros habíais respondido – (plural) you had answered
• vosotras habíais respondido – (feminine, plural) you had answered

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

• ellos habían respondido – they had answered
• ellas habían respondido – (feminine) they had answered
• ustedes habían respondido – (formal, plural) you had answered

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

yo	había respondido	I had answered
tú	habías respondido	you had answered
él/ella/usted	había respondido	he/she/it had answered
nosotros/nosotras	habíamos respondido	we had answered
vosotros/vosotras	habíais respondido	you had answered
ellos/ellas/ustedes	habían respondido	they had 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 some links.

Next Steps to Perfection To practice this conjugation and test your skills try 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 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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