A past participle is a form of a verb that can be used as an adjective as well as in perfect tenses. To see how it works as a part of a perfect tense, please look at the perfect tense lessons in the menu bar to the left.
All past participles get one of two endings. You don’t conjugate the verb for all of the different personal pronouns, or people, like you do with other tenses.
All of your -ar verbs will get the new ending -ado.
hablar (to talk)- hablado (spoken)
cantar (to sing)- cantado (sung)
All of the -er/-ir verbs will get the ending -ido.
comer (to eat)- comido (eaten)
vivir (to live)- vivido (lived)
Of course, there are some irregulars to remember:
abrir (to open) – abierto (open)
cubrir (to cover) – cubierto (covered)
decir (to say) – dicho (said)
escribir (to write) – escrito (written)
freír (to fry) – frito (fried)
hacer (to do) – hecho (done)
morir (to die) – muerto (dead)
imprimir (to print) – impreso (printed)
poner (to put) – puesto (put)
resolver (to resolve) – resuelto (resolved)
romper (to break) – roto (broken)
ver (to see) – visto (seen)
volver (to return) – vuelto (returned)
*Be sure to look for these root verbs when you come across compound verbs like:
deshacer (to undo) – deshecho (undone) predecir (to predict) – predicho (predicted)
Another set of irregulars to remember are the -er/-ir verbs that have a stem that ends in a vowel. It is necessary to accent the i in -ído .
caer (to fall) – caído (fallen) creer (to believe) – creído (believed) leer (to read) – leído (read) oír (to hear) – oído (heard) traer (to bring) – traído (brought)
*Remember, past participles can only be used as an adjective or as part of a perfect tense. If you are trying to say something like “I heard the music”, you will use a different past tense, like preterit or imperfect.
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