Past Perfect
Le plus-que-parfait anglais
Formation / Formation
Structure:
Subject + had + past participle
🇫🇷 Formation :
- • Sujet + had + participe passé
- • I had worked
- • She had studied
- • They had left
- • Même forme pour toutes les personnes
🇬🇧 Formation:
- • Subject + had + past participle
- • Negative: had not / hadn't
- • Question: Had + subject + past participle?
- • Same form for all persons
Utilisations / Uses
1. Action antérieure à une autre action passée / Action before another past action
• When I arrived, she had already left.
Quand je suis arrivé, elle était déjà partie.
Timeline: She left → I arrived (both in the past, but "left" happened first)
2. Avec les marqueurs temporels / With time expressions
• I had never seen such a beautiful sunset before that day.
Je n'avais jamais vu un si beau coucher de soleil avant ce jour-là.
3. Dans le discours rapporté / In reported speech
• He said he had finished his homework.
Il a dit qu'il avait fini ses devoirs.
4. Avec les conditionnelles (3rd conditional) / With conditionals
• If I had studied harder, I would have passed the exam.
Si j'avais étudié plus dur, j'aurais réussi l'examen.
Timeline / Chronologie
had + past participle
verb + -ed
present
She had left (1st) → I arrived (2nd) → Now we're talking about it (3rd)
Exemples / Examples
✓ By the time we got to the cinema, the movie had started.
Le temps qu'on arrive au cinéma, le film avait commencé.
✓ She had lived in Paris before she moved to London.
Elle avait vécu à Paris avant de déménager à Londres.
✓ I hadn't seen him for years when we met yesterday.
Je ne l'avais pas vu depuis des années quand on s'est rencontrés hier.
✓ Had you ever been to Japan before your trip last month?
Étais-tu déjà allé au Japon avant ton voyage le mois dernier ?
Past Perfect vs Past Simple
❌ When I arrived, she left. (Incorrect)
Suggests both happened at the same time
✅ When I arrived, she had left. (Correct)
Clear sequence: she left first, then I arrived
Expressions temporelles clés / Key Time Expressions
Already
I had already eaten when he called.
Never... before
I had never seen snow before.
By the time
By the time she arrived, we had left.
After
After I had finished, I went home.
Before
I had lived there before 2010.
When
When we got there, they had gone.