Les enfants ont mangé tous les gâteaux que leur père avait achetés. (When I got home, I had already heard the bad news.) Quand je suis rentré, j’avais déjà appris la mauvaise nouvelle. Frequently its use will be signaled by adverbs (such as déjà) which can heighten the sense of opposition between actions: The plus-que-parfait is used when the speaker needs to position one action with respect to another. In both sentences certain actions precede others however, only the second sentence seeks to emphasize the precedence of one action. (The alarm rang, I got up, and I had breakfast.) Compare these two sentences:ġ) Le réveil a sonné, je me suis levé, et j’ai pris mon déjeuner. However, the plus-que-parfait is not always used when one action precedes another for example, a list of actions in chronological order may well be put in the passé composé alone. The term “ plus-que-parfait” suggests “more in the past than the perfect.” The tense is used to indicate actions which took place before another action in the past, which is usually (though not always) described in the perfect ( passé composé). (See Past participle agreement for rules on agreement.) Use (I bought the book that Corinne had recommended to me.) J’ai acheté le roman que Corinne m’avait recommandé. (She had already left when Philippe arrived.)
(He had always wanted to travel in Africa.)Įlle était déjà partie quand Philippe est arrivé. Il avait toujours voulu voyager en Afrique. The plus-que-parfait is a compound tense formed with the imperfect tense of the auxiliary ( avoir or être, see Auxiliaries) and the past participle: Back to INDEX Pluperfect (plus-que-parfait) Formation The past participle agrees with the subject for verbs that take être, or with the direct object for verbs that take avoir. The French Conditional Perfect (the past conditional) or Conditionnel passé is made with the conditional tense of avoir or être and the past participle of the verb. a tense used in writing, in everyday speech the Passé Composé is used to refer to past actions. Here we always translate it this way to differentiate it from the present tense translations. The phrase "être en train de + infinitive" can be used to emphasise this sense when necessary in French. Note that French does not have a specific Present Continuous inflection, a more usual translation for the English "I am needing" is to just use the Present tense "je ai besoin de" and rely on context to indicate the sense of the "ongoing" or the "in progress" action of the verb.
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