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

In this Spanish conjugation lesson we are going to learn how to conjugate the verb ser 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

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 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:

• 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

See 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 are focusing on the parts derived from ser 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 – just remove two letters from the end of the infinitive to get the ending – one of -ar, -er, -ir. What’s left is the stem.So for our verb:

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

Based on the ending of the infinitive we can recognize that ser 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: sido.

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 Indicativo, which is había. To that we add the Participio sido to get había sido:

• yo había sido – I had been

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 it is habías. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio sido (so the exact same word as previously) to get habías sido:

• tú habías sido – you had been

Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the 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 sido:

• él había sido – he had been
• ella había sido – she had been
• usted había sido – (formal) you had been

The first person plural has the form habíamos sido. 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 ser: sido to get habíamos sido:

• nosotros habíamos sido – we had been
• nosotras habíamos sido – (feminine) we had been

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 the unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get habíais sido:

• vosotros habíais sido – (plural) you had been
• vosotras habíais sido – (feminine, plural) you had been

And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form habían sido. 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 ser again (sido) to get habían sido:

• ellos habían sido – they had been
• ellas habían sido – (feminine) they had been
• ustedes habían sido – (formal, plural) you had been

¡Ya está! The conjugation is now finished. Put together, the conjugation chart looks like this:

yo	había sido	I had been
tú	habías sido	you had been
él/ella/usted	había sido	he/she/it had been
nosotros/nosotras	habíamos sido	we had been
vosotros/vosotras	habíais sido	you had been
ellos/ellas/ustedes	habían sido	they had been

Click to see all conjugation charts of ser in every tense
But do not end your session yet – it is very 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 your knowledge check 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 ser visit our Exercise section To see conjugation charts in all tenses for ser visit the Conjugator To explore other learning materials visit the Study section

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