In English, you say present perfect, but in Spanish we say pretérito perfecto, antepresente, and in the U. S. people also call it presente perfecto, These differences happen usually between Latin America and Spain, and sometimes between schools, like instituto Cervantes and Columbia or NYU. Here is a table showing these name differences.
Example | English | Spanish (Bello) | Spanish (Academia) | Also |
indicative | indicativo | |||
yo hablo | present | presente | presente | |
yo hablé | preterite | pretérito | pretérito perfecto simple | pretérito indefinido, indefinido, pasado |
yo hablaba | imperfect | copretérito | pretérito imperfecto | imperfecto |
yo hablaré | future | futuro | futuro simple | |
yo hablaría | conditional | pospretérito | condicional simple | condicional, potencial, potencial simple |
yo he hablado | present perfect | antepresente | pretérito perfecto | presente perfecto |
yo hube hablado | antepretérito | pretérito anterior | ||
yo había hablado | pluperfect | antecopretérito | pretérito pluscuamperfecto | |
yo habré hablado | future perfect | antefuturo | futuro perfecto | |
yo habría hablado | conditional perfect | antepospretérito | potencial compuesto | condicional perfecto |
subjuntive | subjuntivo | |||
yo hable | present subjunctive | presente del subjuntivo | presente del subjuntivo | |
yo hablara / yo hablase | imperfect subjunctive | pretérito del subjuntivo | pretérito imperfecto del subjuntivo | imperfecto del subjuntivo |
yo hablare | future subjunctive | futuro del subjuntivo | futuro simple del subjuntivo | futuro imperfecto del subjuntivo |
yo haya hablado | present perfect subjunctive | antepresente del subjuntivo | pretérito perfecto del subjuntivo | presente perfecto del subjuntivo |
yo hubiera hablado | pluperfect subjunctive | antepretérito del subjuntivo | pretérito pluscuamperfecto del subjuntivo | |
yo hubiere hablado | future perfect subjunctive | antefuturo del subjuntivo | futuro perfecto del subjuntivo |
I prefer to refer to verb tenses by its English name. The possibilities of getting confused are less…. as you can see.
Bello refers to Andrés Bello (1781-1865), a Venezuelan scholar.
Originally published on 20110806. Latest update 20210303 (spanishNY.com) top