Había comido, haya comido: dos tiempos compuestos
Lesson 21 built you a two-word machine: haber, then a participle in -ado or -ido. Today you turn one dial and get two more tenses out of the same machine. Put haber into the imperfecto and you have the pluscuamperfecto — había comido, the past that sits behind another past, English 'I had eaten'. Put haber through the flip from lesson 29 and you have the pretérito perfecto de subjuntivo — haya comido, which does everything last week's subjuntivo did, but for something already finished. The participle never changes and the two words never come apart, so there is almost nothing new to memorize: two short ladders, and one question about timing.
One machine, three settings
The participle half never moves. hablar → hablado, comer → comido, vivir → vivido, plus the handful of irregulars you already own: hecho, dicho, visto, escrito, puesto, abierto, vuelto, roto, muerto. What changes is which tense haber is sitting in. In the present it gave you he comido, the tense of experience and open time. Drop it into the imperfecto and you get había comido. Run it through the subjunctive flip and you get haya comido. Three tenses, one participle, and every habit from lesson 21 still holds — the two words stay glued together, the participle stays frozen in -o, and nothing slips between them. There is a fourth setting of the same dial, hubiera comido, and it is the whole of the next lesson; leave it alone until then. One thing to keep straight from the start: haber is never 'to have' in the sense of owning. Owning is tener. Tengo un pastel says there is one on the table; había comido pastel says nothing about who owns anything.
El pluscuamperfecto: había + participio
Take haber into the imperfecto and the ladder runs five rows, like every ladder in this course: yo había, tú habías, él había / ella había / usted había, nosotros habíamos, ustedes habían / ellos habían / ellas habían. Hang a participle on each one and you are done: había comido, habías comido, había comido, habíamos comido, habían comido. Two details save you trouble later. Every row carries a written accent on that i, because -ía is the signature of the imperfecto and the accent is what keeps the vowels from collapsing into one syllable — ha-BÍ-a, three beats, not two. And yo and él share había, exactly as they shared comía back in lesson 22, so a pronoun goes in whenever the room is not obvious: Yo ya había comido. The bottom rung is the usual one — ustedes habían is what you say to two friends and to two strangers alike, and it is the same form ellos takes.
The past behind the past
This tense exists to stack two moments. Something happened, and then something else happened, and the pluscuamperfecto always marks the earlier of the two while the later one stays in the pretérito. Cuando llegué, mi mamá ya había hecho la cena. Cuando entramos, la fiesta ya había empezado. English does exactly the same thing with 'had + done', so for once the two languages line up and you can move between them almost mechanically. The order of the halves is free — Ya había salido cuando llamaste and Cuando llamaste, ya había salido are the same sentence, and the comma is the only thing that shifts. The mistake to watch for is not a wrong form but a missing one: Cuando llegué, ella ya salió leaves both events on the same shelf and your listener loses the order. The other place this tense turns up constantly is reported speech, where everything slides one step back. Comí en el mercado becomes Me dijo que había comido en el mercado, and Nunca he ido a Chile becomes Dijo que nunca había ido a Chile.
Ya, todavía no, nunca — and nothing in between
Four small words do most of the pointing. ya and todavía no are the pair you will reach for hourly: Ya había comido cuando me llamaste. Todavía no habíamos llegado. nunca turns the tense into the standard way of marking a first time: Nunca había visto tanta gente. And antes de plus an infinitive sets the second moment without naming it twice: Había estudiado mucho antes del examen. All of them sit in front of the pair, never inside it, and the same goes for the negative and for object pronouns, exactly as in lesson 21 — No había comido, Ya lo había visto, Nunca me había levantado tan temprano. Never había no comido, never había lo visto. One last carry-over: the participle stays frozen while it is holding haber's hand — las cartas que había escrito, not escritas. Let go of haber and the same word turns into an adjective and starts agreeing again: las cartas estaban escritas, la mesa ya estaba puesta.
El pretérito perfecto de subjuntivo: haya + participio
Now the other dial. haber was on the DISHES list in lesson 29, so you have already built its subjunctive once: haya, hayas, haya, hayamos, hayan — five rows again, and no accents anywhere this time. Hang the same participle on it and the tense is finished: haya comido, hayas comido, haya comido, hayamos comido, hayan comido. yo and él share haya here too, which is one more reason pronouns turn up in this tense more often than elsewhere: Ojalá que yo no haya llegado tarde against Ojalá que él no haya llegado tarde. That is the whole form. If you can already say Espero que comas, you can say Espero que hayas comido without learning a single new ending — the flip is in your hands from lesson 29, and the participle is in your hands from lesson 21.
Same triggers, one step back in time
Nothing about WHEN the subjunctive shows up has changed. Every trigger from the last two lessons is still the trigger: wanting, feeling and doubting, plus cuando, para que, antes de que, aunque, ojalá, es raro que, no creo que. The only new question is timing — is the thing still ahead of you, or already over? Hear the pairs. Espero que llegues temprano says the arriving has not happened yet; Espero que hayas llegado temprano says it has, and I am hoping it went the way I wanted. No creo que venga is about tonight; No creo que haya venido is about last night. Es raro que no me llamen complains about a habit; Es raro que no me hayan llamado complains about today. Me alegro de que estudies praises the routine; Me alegro de que hayas estudiado praises the exam you already took. And one shape worth stealing whole: cuando plus this tense, for something that has to be finished before the next thing can start — Cuando hayas terminado, hablamos. Te llamo cuando hayan llegado.
Four pasts on one shelf
You now own four ways of talking about the past, and they are not four levels of difficulty — they are four different jobs. Comí pan is an event with edges, and across Latin America that covers this morning as easily as last year: Hoy comí en el mercado. He comido pan is a life so far, or a frame that has not closed: Nunca he comido insectos, Este año he comido mejor. Comía pan is the backdrop and the habit, the tense of 'used to' and 'was doing': De niño comía pan todas las mañanas. Había comido pan is earlier than some other past moment: Cuando llegaste, ya había comido. Only the second one carries a regional warning, and you met it in lesson 21 — a textbook written in Spain uses he comido for today's lunch, and from Ciudad de México to Buenos Aires that is comí. The pluscuamperfecto has no such split. It behaves identically on both sides of the Atlantic and in every country in the region, which makes it one of the safest tenses you will ever learn.
Fifty candles, and what to call the cake
cumplir is the birthday verb: Hoy cumple cincuenta años. Ask ¿Cuántos años cumples? and you are asking which birthday is arriving, not how old somebody is right now. The noun el cumpleaños already carries its -s and never grows another — un cumpleaños, dos cumpleaños. ¡Felicidades! covers a birthday, a wedding and a new job alike; ¡Feliz cumpleaños! is the birthday-only version, and much of South America prefers ¡Felicitaciones! for an achievement. In Mexico nobody sings the song you know: they sing Las mañanitas, at dawn if the family can manage it. The cake is el pastel in Mexico, Central America and much of the region, la torta in the Southern Cone and Colombia, el queque in Chile and Costa Rica — and watch out, because in Mexico una torta is a sandwich. darse cuenta de is to realize, and careful speech keeps that de: Me di cuenta de que ya habían puesto la mesa. Its false friend realizar means to carry out, not to notice. pensar splits three ways — pensar en to think about, pensar que to hold an opinion, and pensar plus an infinitive to plan: Pienso ir el domingo. Finally en serio, the everyday 'really?': ¿En serio?, with de veras understood everywhere and a very colloquial ¿neta? in Mexico.
