How do you form the pluperfect tense?

• The pluperfect, much like the passé composé, is a compound tense (i.e. made up of two parts). The first is the auxiliary verb (avoir or être) and the second is the past participle. For this example, I will use I had eaten (manger).  1) You first need to work out whether your verb (e.g. manger) takes avoir or être in a compound tense. Most verbs take avoir however a small group take être. These are the verbs that form the MRS VAN DER TRAMP acronym as well as reflexive verbs. Manger however takes avoir. 2) Then you have to conjugate the auxiliary so that it agrees with the subject. Unlike the passé composé, the auxiliary has to be in the imperfect tense. I had eaten would require avoir in the 'je' form (1st person singular) in the imperfect- j'avais. 3) In addition to this, you have to add the past participle of your main verb (manger). Each verb group forms their past participles in different ways: -er becomes -é, -ir becomes -i, -re becomes -u. Of course there are irregulars in addition to this. Manger is an -er verb, therefore it becomes mangé. 4) By following these steps, you arrive at j'avais mangé = I had eaten

N.B. the same MRS VAN DER TRAMP verbs that take être in the passé composé also take être in the pluperfect. The same rules also apply to reflexive verbs. For any verb that takes être, make sure the past participle agrees in both gender and number (feminine add -e, plurals add -s).