Add on the past participle form of the main verb (which are the same past participles you’ve learned for passé composé).Start with the imperfect tense of either avoir or être (with the usual subject-verb agreement for the a voir/ être conjugation, of course).
Plus que parfait vs passe compose plus#
In conclusion, anytime you need to use plus que parfait, these should be your steps: Finally, avant que is a subjunctive structure, so commande is followed by soit, not est. Similarly, the past participle of arriver, arrivé, receives an extra e because the noun la commande is feminine. The past participle of partir, parti, receives an s on the end since the subject, nous, is plural. (“We had already left before our order arrived.”) Nous étions déjà parti s avant que notre commande soit arrivé e. The past participle of sortir, sorti, receives an s because the subject, les parents, is plural, and the past participle of venir, venu, receives an e because the subject, sa petite amie, is feminine.Īnd, for bonus points, with the past tense subjunctive: (“After Paul’s parents had gone out to the movies, his girlfriend came to their house.”)
The plusque parfait construction can also precede the passé composé construction. (“I discovered that the store had closed an hour ago.”) J’ ai découvert que le magasin avait fermé il y a une heure. (“She realized that they had forgotten her promise.”)
Plus que parfait vs passe compose how to#
“Bridget had danced professionally before she became a dance instructor.” How to form the plusque parfait “Before I found out that the woman was a celebrity, I had guessed that she was very wealthy.” The exact same concept and tense also exists in English, though as a native speaker you may have never consciously paid attention to it.Įssentially, it’s a way to talk about one past event occurring before another past event. The French plus que parfait past tense is fortunately neither very hard to understand nor to master.