The Present Perfect Tense

In English we use the verb 'to have' for two purposes: to express property: "I have a book" and as an auxiliary verb as in "I have been there before". In Spanish the job of the verb is performed by the verb 'tener", therefore you can express ownership by saying "Yo tengo un libro". However, in contrast with English (the same verb for two jobs) the auxiliary part is not done by tener, instead this task is given to a different and new verb: HABER.

So 'haber' performs the auxiliary part of 'to have' but this is only half the equation, in "I have been there before" 'been' is also a verb that needs conjugation. In other words, whenever you want to say 'I have been there before' the verb 'to have and to be are conjugated and put together. This sort of conjugational systems where 'haber and the a verb are conjugated are referred to as 'compund tenses' and the form in to which the verb 'to be' is conjugated is referred as the past participle. Search lists for the past particples of verbs and you will find them, you can only use them in connection with haber.

Key: The compound tenses are formed by taking the auxilary verb "haber" conjugate it and adding a past participle of whichever verb you want to use.

Therefore, the present perfect takes the present tense form of the verb "haber" and adds the past participle.

Here is "haber" in the present tense.

	singular	plural
first person	he	hemos
second person	has	habéis
third person	ha	han

Keep in mind that habeis is hardly ever used by many Spanish speakers

Here is an example of "comer" conjugated in the present perfect. Note that the past participle of "comer" is comido.

I have eaten    yo he comido
you have eaten  tú has comido
he/she/you formal     él/ella/usted ha comido
we have eaten      nosotros hemos comido
they have eaten      ellos/ellas/ustedes han comido

NOTE: I did not show how to create the past participle of a verb, check out my other posting past participle