Noveno

Past Perfect
Introduction
The past perfect tense is often used in English when we are relating two events which happened in the past. It helps to show which event happened first. This page willexplain the rules for forming and using the tense.
Forming the past perfect tense
This tense is formed using two components: the verb HAVE (in the past tense), and the past participle form of a verb.With a regular verb the past participle ends with -ED (just like the simple past). Irregular verbs have a special past participle form that you have to learn. Here are the rules, using the regularverb "arrive" and the irregular verb "eat":
Subject HAVE Past Participle Contraction
I had Arrived.
Eaten. I'd arrived.
I'd eaten.
You had Arrived.
Eaten. You'd arrived.
You'd eaten.
He hadArrived.
Eaten. He'd arrived.
He'd eaten.
She had arrived.
Eaten. She'd arrived.
She'd eaten.
It had Arrived.
Eaten. It'd arrived.
It'd eaten.
We had Arrived.
Eaten. We'd arrived.
We'd eaten.They had Arrived.
Eaten. They'd arrived.
They'd eaten.
Using the Past Perfect
The past perfect is used to show you which of two events happened first. Imagine that two things happened in thepast:
Past Event I went to see the movie.
Past Event We discussed the movie in class.
Here, we don't know which order the events happened in. That may be important -- perhaps I went to see the movieafter the discussion, or maybe I saw the movie before the discussion. There are many ways to make this sequence clear, and the past perfect is one of them. This is how we do it:
I went to see themovie. We had discussed the movie in class.
Here, we know that the discussion took place first — even though the sentence describing it comes afterwards. We discussed the movie, and then I went to seeit. This can be very useful when you are telling a story or relating a sequence of events. At any point in your story, you can jump back to a previous event, and your reader will not be confused...