tardar means: to take time
Click to see all conjugation charts of tardar in every tense

In this conjugation lesson we will see how to conjugate the verb tardar in the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto B 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 Pluscuamperfecto B 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 B 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:

• A conjugated form of the auxiliary verb haber. In case of the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto de Subjuntivo B tense, we use the Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo B (Imperfect Subjunctive B) 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 tardar 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 need to begin by splitting the infinitive into a stem and an ending. It’s very easy to do – simply remove two letters from the end of the infinitive form to get the ending – one of -ar, -er, -ir. What’s left is the stem.So for our verb:

• the stem is: tard-
• and the ending is: -ar

Based on the ending of the infinitive we can tell that tardar 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: tardado.

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 simply take the first person singular form of haber conjugated in Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo B, which is hubiese. To that we add the Participio tardado to get hubiese tardado:

• yo hubiese tardado – I had taken time

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 Subjuntivo B tense, and it is hubieses. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio tardado (so the exact same word as previously) to get hubieses tardado:

• tú hubieses tardado – you had taken time

Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Pretérito Imperfecto B tense and we utilize the corresponding person’s form (third person singular), namely hubiese. Then we also take the same Participio as for all other persons, and putting them together we get hubiese tardado:

• él hubiese tardado – he had taken time
• ella hubiese tardado – she had taken time
• usted hubiese tardado – (formal) you had taken time

The first person plural has the form hubiésemos tardado. 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 B tense: hubiésemos. Second, and to this word we again add the Participio of tardar: tardado to get hubiésemos tardado:

• nosotros hubiésemos tardado – we had taken time
• nosotras hubiésemos tardado – (feminine) we had taken time

Again, let’s do the same for the second person plural. We need to get the conjugated form of the verb haber in the Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo B tense, second person plural, and it’s hubieseis. Next, we take our unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get hubieseis tardado:

• vosotros hubieseis tardado – (plural) you had taken time
• vosotras hubieseis tardado – (feminine, plural) you had taken time

And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form hubiesen tardado. 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 B conjugation. It is hubiesen. We add the Participio of tardar again (tardado) to get hubiesen tardado:

• ellos hubiesen tardado – they had taken time
• ellas hubiesen tardado – (feminine) they had taken time
• ustedes hubiesen tardado – (formal, plural) you had taken time

Hurray! The conjugation is now finished. That’s the final result:

yo	hubiese tardado	I had taken time
tú	hubieses tardado	you had taken time
él/ella/usted	hubiese tardado	he/she/it had taken time
nosotros/nosotras	hubiésemos tardado	we had taken time
vosotros/vosotras	hubieseis tardado	you had taken time
ellos/ellas/ustedes	hubiesen tardado	they had taken time

Click to see all conjugation charts of tardar in every tense
But do not 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 Perfection To practice this conjugation and test your knowledge try this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game To see other conjugation lessons for this verb choose another tense: PresentePretéritoImperfectoCondicionalFuturoPretérito Perfecto CompuestoPretérito PluscuamperfectoFuturo PerfectoCondicional PerfectoPretérito Perfecto Compuesto (subjuntivo)Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A (subjuntivo)Futuro Perfecto (subjuntivo)  For exercises and examples related to tardar visit our Exercise section To see conjugation charts in all tenses for tardar visit the Conjugator To explore other learning materials visit the Study section

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