Past participle (participio in Spanish) is a very frequent form of Spanish verbs used as an adjective or as a part of perfect tense. In today’s article you will learn how to form participle in Spanish and how to use it.
Maybe you have noticed that in our previous article we talked about Spanish gerund (gerundio) which corresponds to present participle in English (Estoy leyendo. – I’m reading.) It’s important not to mix these two terms.
How to form participio in Spanish
Before we focus on the use of participle in Spanish, let’s see how to form the participle. There are regular and irregular forms of participle in Spanish. To make the past participle of a regular verb, you just have to drop the ending –ar, -er, -ir and add –ado (if the verb ends in –ar) or –ido (if the verb ends in –er or –ir):
Trabajar – trabajado, comer – comido, vivir– vivido
However, some Spanish verbs have irregular forms of past participle (abrir – abierto, ver – visto, poner – puesto, decir – dicho, escribir – escrito etc.).
The use of participio in Spanish
There are two main uses of past participle in Spanish as we said above. Firstly, we use the participle together with the verb haber to form perfect tenses: present perfect (pretérito perfecto de indicativo) and past perfect (pretérito pluscuamperfecto):
Hemos salido tres veces esta semana. (We have gone out three times this week.)
Cuando Miriam vino a Valencia, ya había estudiado español. (Before Miriam came to Valencia she had studied Spanish.)
If the verb is reflexive, we put the pronoun before haber:
Me he comido toda la tarta. (I’ve eaten the whole cake.)
¿Os habéis limpiado la casa? (Have you cleaned the house?)
Secondly, the past participle can be used as an adjective. In this case it has the same form (masculine, feminine, singular, plural) as the noun which it refers to:
Sofía está muy cansada. (Sofía is very tired.)
Durante las vacaciones el colegio no está abierto. (During the holidays the school isn’t open.)
We often use the verb estar + past participle to talk about results of actions:
La cena ya está cocinada. (The dinner is already cooked.)
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