#124: Trapassato Prossimo
The trapassato prossimo is a tense in Italian that corresponds to the English past perfect tense:
- I had worked
- I had gone
In Italian, the trapassato prossimo is formed with the imperfect of avere or essere, depending upon the verb, and the past participle (participio passato):
- avevo parlato
avevi parlato
aveva parlato
avevamo parlato
avevate parlato
avevano parlato - ero andato/a
eri andato/a
era andato/a
eravamo andati/e
eravate andati/e
erano andati/e
The trapassato prossimo indicates a past action that has taken place before another past action and can be paired with the passato prossimo or the imperfetto.
Don’t forget that with essere, the past participle must agree with the subject in gender and in number:
- They had gone to the supermarket.
Erano andati al supermercato.
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[...] emailed me recently asking me to explain the differences between the passato prossimo and the trapassato prossimo. Past tenses confuse a lot of learners so let’s look at where each tense stands temporally in [...]