In Latin America, you will find more people using Simple Past (pretérito indefinido), which is why it is important to explain some of the differences between these two tenses.The present perfect tense is more commonly used to describe actions that occurred in a recent past, such as today, this morning or this afternoon.Even if you don’t mention the timeframe, using present perfect tells us that the action took place not too long ago.Whereas actions that occurred, for example, yesterday or last week will normally be expressed using the simple past tense.Let’s look at one more example of the differences between both tenses:However, the first sentence tells us that action took place in the past, without mentioning a particular moment in time ie.

Have conversations faster, understand people when they speak fast, and other tested tips to learn faster.It’s easy to be overwhelmed by complex grammar terminology when you first start learning Spanish.So what exactly do we mean by the present perfect tense (or “pretérito perfecto” in español).As with its English counterpart, this tense is used when describing an action that started and finished in the past, but happened in a recent enough time frame that it is connected to the present.The easiest way to break this down in simple terms is by reviewing the same tense in English, which uses a simple formula:Now that you know what this tense is, we can examine how to conjugate it.In order to use this tense correctly, you need to learn the conjugation for the auxiliary verb “haber”, which is as follows:All regular verbs follow a structure which consists of taking the root of the verb and changing the ending, depending on whether the verb ends in AR, ER or IR.Regular verbs ending in -AR will add the ending “-ado” to the root of the verb.For example, the verb comprar (to buy) will become “comprado” (bought).Regular verbs ending in both -ER and -IR will add the same ending “-ido” to the root of the verb.For example, the verb comer (to eat) will become “comido” (eaten), and the verb dormir (to sleep) will become “dormido” (slept)Once you know how to conjugate the auxiliary verb Haber, it’s easy to use the present perfect tense when dealing with regular verbs.Up until now, using the present perfect tense with regular verbs has been easy.But of course, there are irregular verbs that we need to deal with and these verbs do not follow the -ado or -ido rule we previously covered.Each irregular verb has a different past participle, which you need to memorize separately.Let’s dive in and look at the most common irregular verbs.It’s important to understand how to use reflexive pronouns in the present perfect tense.Reflexive verbs are used when a subject in a sentence performs an action on itself.For example, the sentence “I have seen myself in the mirror” requires you to use the reflexive verb + reflexive pronoun, which goes before the haber conjugation.Notice that the position of the reflexive pronoun “me” is placed between the subject and the conjugated verb “haber”.Since we can drop personal pronouns in Spanish, we will often find sentences that start with a reflexive pronoun ie. What is the present perfect in Spanish? The present perfect is most frequently used to talk about experiences or changes that have taken place, but there are other less common uses as well. Present Perfect Tense This tense expresses an idea of completion or occurrence of an action in past without giving an idea about the exact time of its occurrence. I have written articles on different topics. The action happened in the past, but right now, in the present, we don’t know if I’ve lost the money or not – we just guess that it could have happened.It can also be used to describe actions that we expect to be finished in the future, but there is a feeling of uncertainty as to whether it will happen or not.There are a couple of easy rules that you can memorize to help you identify when you need to use the subjunctive.Since the subjunctive is used in relative clauses, it will be preceded by phrases and expressions that indicate a probability, desire, or assumption related to something is not fact (at least not yet), or something that is unknown.You will notice that the relative pronoun “que” is a cue to enter the subjunctive mood.For now, you can test your comprehension with the below exercises.Fill the blanks with correct conjugation of the verb haber and past participle (present perfect).The exact strategies you need to become conversational in Spanish this year. I visited Barcelona The last thing that we’re going to cover is using present perfect tense in the subjunctive mood.The subjunctive for present perfect is used to speak about past actions related to the present, as well as future actions that may or may not be completed.You might recall the formula we used earlier for present perfect.The present perfect subjunctive uses almost the same formula, with a slight change.Instead of using the auxiliary verb “haber” in present tense, we’re going to conjugate it in As you can see, the conjugation is slightly different, but we still use the auxiliary verb “haber” and add the past participle of the action verb.As we mentioned earlier, the present perfect subjunctive is normally used when conveying emotions, possibility, feelings, doubts, uncertainty, opinions, desires, and expectations. Each of these statements also expresses that the actions occurred over a period of time rather than a single moment in time.These examples indicate that the action began at a time before now. A tense that places the action, process or state expressed by the verb at a time before the present … The Royal Spanish Academy defines the past perfect in Spanish, called “pretérito pluscuamperfecto”, as follows: m. Gram A perfect tense that locates the action, the process or the state expressed by the verb in a previous moment to another, yet in the past. The subjunctive for present perfect is used to speak about past actions related to the present, as well as future actions that may or may not be completed. Definition of Present Perfect Tense.

Define present perfect: the definition of the present perfect tense is a tense denoting an action that occurred at an unspecified time before now.

m. Gram.