Pluperfect

The pluperfect says that an action was already finished before another moment in the past: "I had eaten", "they had left". It is built from the imperfect of the auxiliary and the invariable participle. Some grammars call this tense the past perfect.

How it is formed

Use the imperfect of kam (classes 1 to 5) or jam (class 6), followed by the participle:

	dal "go out" (kam)	ngrihem "get up" (jam)
unë	kisha dalë	isha ngritur
ti	kishe dalë	ishe ngritur
ai, ajo	kishte dalë	ishte ngritur
ne	kishim dalë	ishim ngritur
ju	kishit dalë	ishit ngritur
ata, ato	kishin dalë	ishin ngritur

The participle depends on the verb and its class; see the table in the present perfect page or Participles.

A rarer variant: a second pluperfect uses the simple past of the auxiliary: pata larë "I had washed". It is literary, and in modern Standard Albanian it has largely been replaced by kisha larë.

When to use it

1. An action before another past action

The pluperfect places an event in the "past of the past", relative to a moment already established in the story:

Kur erdha, ai kishte ikur. "When I came, he had left."

The pluperfect can be tied to that moment by its result (the earlier action explains the later situation), or it can be detached from it and simply be an earlier event.

2. Before a stated point in the past

Time expressions often mark the moment: që atë ditë "since that day", deri atëherë or gjer atëherë "until then", deri atë verë "until that summer", para se "before".

3. Reported speech

Words that were spoken in the simple past or present perfect move to the pluperfect when they are reported after a past verb:

Direct: Ata kanë ikur. "They have left."
Reported: Ai tha se ata kishin ikur. "He said that they had left."

4. In speech, for the perfect conditional

In casual speech, in the main clause of an "if" sentence about something that did not happen, kisha + participle can stand in for do të kisha + participle, so that kisha ardhur can be understood as do të kisha ardhur "I would have come". See Conditional and if-sentences.

Negation

Nuk goes before the auxiliary: Nuk kishte ardhur. "He had not come."

Watch out: the pluperfect is not "the past of the simple past". If the earlier event is the point of your sentence, and there is no second past moment it comes before, the simple past or the present perfect is usually the right choice.