Past Participles:
Past participles are verbs that are converted into adjectival
forms. For many verbs in English, the past participle
looks exactly like the past tense form of the verb. As
a result, lazy English speakers often use past participles instead
of past tense in the cases where they are not the same form:
I saw the movie. (proper English) I seen the movie.
(improper English)
Another way to conceive of past participles is that they are
the verb forms that follow the helping verbs "have"
and "to be." It should be noted that the helping
verb "to have" in Spanish is "haber", not
"tener." Both SER and ESTAR can be used
with past participles, but the rules for deciding which one
are best explained on the SER vs ESTAR
page. For your purposes in first semester Spanish,
use ESTAR. The verb SER is used for passive voice, and
may not be appropriate for you until later--like second semester.
For most verbs in English, the past participle is equivalent
to an "--ed" ending, but there are some irregular
past participles in English, and in Spanish.
Example--the verb "to go"
You will learn how to form the simple past tense in second
semester, and review it in third semester. You can, however,
easily learn the compound present perfect tense (haber + past
participle), and use it instead of past tense for many cases.
More on that below.
Turning Verbs into Adjectives (past
participles)
To form the past participle (each verb has only one form, since
they do not reflect person), here are the rules:
for AR verbs, change the AR to
ADO, for ER & IR verbs, change the ending to IDO.
HABLAR--Hablado
COMER--Comido Vivir--Vivido.
Grammatically, a past participle
can function as a participle when accompanying the verb HABER,
and as an adjective in all other uses. See the page on
uninflected verbs
for more information. In this case, the participle has
only one form.
When past participles are accompanying
SER, ESTAR, or used as direct modifiers (adjectives), then they
must reflect the gender and number of the objects they describe.
In this case, each participle has four different forms: aburrido,
aburrida, aburridos, aburridas.
When they are combined with the
verb haber (I have eaten, They have run, we have spoken) then
they ALWAYS end in O.
There are a limited number of irregular
participles, similar English (eaten, broken, seen, gone, spoken,
done, driven, drunk):
There are a limited number of irregular
participles, just as in English:
