Click to see all conjugation charts of tardar in every tense
In this Spanish conjugation lesson we are going to learn how to conjugate the verb tardar 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 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 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
- the stem is: tard-
- and the ending is: -ar
And now, as we understand how both parts used by this tense are created separately, let’s move on 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 tardado to get había tardado:
- yo había tardado – I had taken time
- tú habías tardado – you had taken time
- él había tardado – he had taken time
- ella había tardado – she had taken time
- usted había tardado – (formal) you had taken time
- nosotros habíamos tardado – we had taken time
- nosotras habíamos tardado – (feminine) we had taken time
- vosotros habíais tardado – (plural) you had taken time
- vosotras habíais tardado – (feminine, plural) you had taken time
- ellos habían tardado – they had taken time
- ellas habían tardado – (feminine) they had taken time
- ustedes habían tardado – (formal, plural) you had taken time
This is it! The conjugation is now finished. The final result looks as follows:
yo | había tardado | I had taken time |
tú | habías tardado | you had taken time |
él/ella/usted | había tardado | he/she/it had taken time |
nosotros/nosotras | habíamos tardado | we had taken time |
vosotros/vosotras | habíais tardado | you had taken time |
ellos/ellas/ustedes | habían tardado | they had taken time |
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
|
Report a mistake | Give feedback
Thank you very much for making the effort to contact us!
We strive to provide the highest quality content and we greatly appreciate even the smallest suggestions:
We strive to provide the highest quality content and we greatly appreciate even the smallest suggestions: