Spanish language Q&A Forum

Hola,

If habría is the only usage here, in what context would the other conjugated parts of the verb be used?

Gracias,

It seems to me that in many cases we could substitute the imperfect with perfect. The main difference would be that in the former we talk about a repeated activity and in the latter about whether something ever took place or a few times at the most.

Hi Inma,

The test questions given at the end of this section are as follows:

1.       ________ poner el despertador. He [accidentally] forgot to set the alarm clock.HINT: Use a construction with the verb "olvidar" that expresses an "unintentional action"

Correct answer given: Se me ha olvidado

2.       ________ poner el despertador.He [accidentally] forgot to set the alarm clock.HINT: Use a construction with the verb "olvidar" that expresses an "unintentional action"

Correct answer given: Se le olvidó

Both examples feature an action represented by a verb that follows a form of olvidar. This is apparently an example of the accidental “se”. But the examples in this lesson use a different structure. The object forgotten is the subject of the sentence and olvidarse is conjugated with that in mind. It is explicitly stated that the verb is conjugated in the third person plural “to agree with the subject .”  That is not the case on either test item. Plus the test “hints” given are not useful for two reasons:  1) They ask that you use the verb “olvidar” instead of “olvidarse” (misleading) and 2) it says that the verb expresses an “unintentional action”; which is true of all forgetting , no? However, I think I could have figured out what was wanted If the sentence structure of the test item were not different from the lesson (e.g. in the lesson the thing forgotten was the subject of the verb).

You can't say we don't need to use and then need to use. You can either say:

We don't need to use you may / can use the infinitive or;

We don't need to "can't" use followed by must use the infinitive.