past perfect for préparer and appeler

Bonjour! In lesson 4.9, there are two example sentences that confuse me: "Tu t'es préparé pour les vacances!" and "Vous vous êtes appelés au téléphone hier." Judging from the translations, they both appear to be using the past perfect tense, but I thought that these two verbs would be using avoir rather than être. So what's going on here? Merci d'avance! John

Ah, good question! The verbs <i>préparer</i> and <i>appeler </i> would use *avoir* for the auxiliary. But these sentences are actually using the <u>pronominal</u> verbs <i>se préparer </i> (to prepare onself, to get ready) and <i>s'appeler </i> (to call onself), so they use the auxiliary *être* (and they also have the masculine/feminine/plural agreement). [Note the "tu *te*", "vous *vous*"]

Ah, the joys of learning another language; just when we thought we had it figured out, along comes a curve. In the passé composé (past perfect), pronominal verbs are conjugated with être as their auxiliary. This includes those verbs that at other times use avoir as their auxiliary. Sometimes the lessons introduce concepts, such as the sentences in Lesson 4.9, that we haven't yet studied. We just need patience because they're eventually explained. For more information, you might check Lessons 10.5, 20.5, and 20.6. They give nice explanations and Lesson 20.5 deals with the passé composé .

Thank you both, Diana and torusan, for your explanations! John