sobrevivir means: to come through, to outlive, to survive
In this lesson we will learn how to conjugate the verb sobrevivir in the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A tense of the Subjuntivo mood. It means we will see step by step how to get the following conjugation:
| yo | hubiera sobrevivido | I had come through |
| tú | hubieras sobrevivido | you had come through |
| él/ella/usted | hubiera sobrevivido | he/she/it had come through |
| nosotros/nosotras | hubiéramos sobrevivido | we had come through |
| vosotros/vosotras | hubierais sobrevivido | you had come through |
| ellos/ellas/ustedes | hubieran sobrevivido | they had come through |
How to translate Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A to English
Note that the English phrases in the third column of the above conjugation chart are not direct translations from Spanish to English. They are usually the closest general equivalents. The example differences are:- In Spanish, 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 A 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:
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| Check out the conjugation charts to learn how to conjugate the auxiliary verb haber. That’s a separate topic, so for brevity we’re focusing on the parts derived from sobrevivir 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 have to 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 form and you have the ending – one of -ar, -er, -ir. What’s left is the stem. So in case of our verb:
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| Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that sobrevivir belongs to the -ir verb group. This group, in turn, uses the -ido ending in its Participio form. Putting all that together, our Participio is: sobrevivido. And 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 Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo A, which is hubiera. To that we add the Participio sobrevivido to get hubiera sobrevivido:
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 Subjuntivo A tense, and that is hubieras. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio sobrevivido (so the exact same word as previously) to get hubieras sobrevivido:
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Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Pretérito Imperfecto A tense and we utilize the corresponding person’s form (third person singular), namely hubiera. Then we also take the same Participio as for all other persons, and putting them together we get hubiera sobrevivido:
The first person plural has the form hubiéramos sobrevivido. 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 A tense: hubiéramos. Second, to this word we again add the Participio of sobrevivir: sobrevivido to get hubiéramos sobrevivido:
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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 Subjuntivo A tense, second person plural, and it is hubierais. Next, we take the unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get hubierais sobrevivido:
And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form hubieran sobrevivido. 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 A conjugation. It is hubieran. We add the Participio of sobrevivir again (sobrevivido) to get hubieran sobrevivido:
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That’s it! The conjugation is now complete. But don’t end your session yet – it is very important to repeat and practice the material in order to retain it. Check below for next steps.
Next Steps
- To practice this conjugation and test yourself check this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game
- For exercises and examples related to sobrevivir visit our Exercise section
- To see conjugation charts in all tenses for sobrevivir visit the Conjugator
- To explore other learning materials visit the Study section
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