Look at these examples to see how the past perfect is used.
He couldn't make a sandwich because he'd forgotten to buy bread.
The hotel was full, so I was glad that we'd booked in advance.
My new job wasn't exactly what I’d expected.
Try this exercise to test your grammar.
- Grammar test 1
Read the explanation to learn more.
Grammar explanation
Time up to a point in the past
We use the past perfect simple (had + past participle) to talk about time up to a certain point in the past.
She'd published her first poem by the time she was eight.
We'd finished all the water before we were halfway up the mountain.
Had the parcel arrived when you called yesterday?
Past perfect for the earlier of two past actions
We can use the past perfect to show the order of two past events. The past perfect shows the earlier action and the past simple shows the later action.
When the police arrived, the thief had escaped.
It doesn't matter in which order we say the two events. The following sentence has the same meaning.
The thief had escaped when the police arrived.
Note that if there's only a single event, we don't use the past perfect, even if it happened a long time ago.
The Romans spoke Latin. (NOT
The Romans had spoken Latin.)
Past perfect after before
We can also use before + past perfect to show that an action was not done or was incomplete when the past simple action happened.
They left before I'd spoken to them.
Sadly, the author died before he'd finished the series.
Adverbs
We often use the adverbs already (= 'before the specified time'), still (= as previously), just (= 'a very short time before the specified time'), ever (= 'at any time before the specified time') or never (= 'at no time before the specified time') with the past perfect.
I called his office but he'd already left.
It still hadn't rained at the beginning of May.
I went to visit her when she'd just moved to Berlin.
It was the most beautiful photo I'd ever seen.
Had you ever visited London when you moved there?
I'd never met anyone from California before I met Jim.
Do this exercise to test your grammar again.
- Grammar test 2
Hello Andi,
Don't worry about including your email address! I just wanted to explain why we deleted it. Thanks also for explaining what you think the answers are. This helps us understand what our users are thinking and give more specific answers.
In this case, there's actually more than one answer for some of the gaps; which one is correct depends on the context and on how old the little girl is now. If, for example, this little girl is now 12 and her parents were thinking these things when she was 2, then the past simple or past perfect forms would be correct -- more specifically, for 1, 'always thought' or 'had always thought'; for 2, 'learnt' or 'had learnt'; and for 3 'tried' or 'had tried'.
There is very little difference between the past simple and past perfect forms if this is the situation, but the past perfect would suggest some other point of time in the past (not mentioned in this sentence, but understood from another sentence or the general context) that these events occurred before.
I hope this helps you make sense of it. Please let us know if you have any follow-up questions.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Andi,
Most of the time, using the past perfect is a choice, not a requirement. The 'cause/effect relation' that you describe doesn't impose the use of the past perfect in this case, either -- it's a decision the writer could make to use it. In a sentence like this, the past perfect can be used to clarify the order of the events, but it is not necessary to do this.
The sentence you ask about is a good example of this. If the writer or speaker wanted to make it very clear that their daughter learned to read early and that this is what made their parents think she was clever, then 'had learned to read early' would be a good choice. But it could be that this is not a particularly important point, or the writer might think that it's obvious that first the girl did something extraordinary and after that her parents noticed it, and so could use the past simple form. In this case, the reader would likely still suppose that the reading came first, though it would be less clearly indicated.
Hope this helps you make sense of it.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Andi,
I don't think I said that those forms were not possible, but rather that other forms were more common. In fact, these forms are possible here in a context where we wanted to emphasise that, for example, they had these thoughts again and again over a period of time. If you follow the link, you'll see a detailed explanation of the past continuous form, and also links to explanations of other verb forms. If you have a close look at them, I think this will help you understand the different possibilities here.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello vanshh03,
The past simple requires a definite past time, but this can be implicit in the context and not explicitly stated in the sentence. Both sentences are grammatically correct in terms of how they are formed, but we can't say more without know the context in which they are used.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team