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Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert Spanish teachers
5,820 questions • 9,536 answers • 953,682 learners
In English, we often express the imperfect tense (a past habitual action) using the modal "would":
When I was young, I would eat sugar.
I can't find examples of the Spanish equivalent:
Cuando era joven, comería azúcar.
But just using the Spanish imperfect seems like it might be wrong:
Cuando era joven, comía azúcar.
... seems to translate literally as "When I was young, I was eating sugar", which doesn't seem to clarify that it was a habitual action rather than a one-time thing.
So, how would you say "When I was young, I would eat sugar" in Spanish?
Suppose I wanted to say something like, "I wouldn't have minded if they got married, I was seeing someone else", or "I didn't care if the wrecked their's appetite with ice cream, I wasn't going to make dinner anyway" is there no combination of tenses that would admit the use o "por mí que"?
I would like to ask about the construction lleva incluida, how does it work? It seems to be differdng from the construction llevar plus active participle (lesson in level B1) as incluida is a passive participle.
Could you explain the distinctions between:
"Cristina sería una buena madre." "Cristina será una buena madre." "Cristina va a ser una buena madre."
I understand the difference between the first and the last, but I don't understand how the second version is distinct from those two.
I am sure that I am missing something that is right before my eyes, but I am going to ask for clarification anyway.
The lesson states that "cualquier is used BEFORE a singular noun."
Further it indicates Cualquiera must be preceded by un or una + and comes AFTER a singlular noun.
Lastly it references the plural of Cualqiera: cualesquiera. This has no requisite precedent (un/una).
Therefore, please explain if there is an exception as apparent in the following:
"La Unión estará de CUALESQUIERA derechos de aduana." This test question has no article precedent (un/una) and CUALESQUIERA appears BEFORE the noun (derechos de aduana); that is, it appears to act more in line with the singular CUALQUIER. So the question is: Is CUALESQUIERA the plural of Cualquier and not the plural of Cualquiera. Thank in advance for your help and response.
Why is it esta rather than estan when referring to las oficinas (plural of office)?
These tickets for the tennis match are cheap. : ___ entradas para el partido de tenis son baratas.
The key word here to me is "These". The answer of "Estas entradas" is marked as wrong and should be "Las" -- which would be "The tickets for ..."
This looks like a mistake to me.
All the examples use “no más que”. Can the title be changed to “using no más que”?
Hola Inma,
I'm struggling with this construction. I have been googling and found that saber and agradecido/a are commonly put together presumably meaning "to be grateful (for)" perhaps.
Therefore I'm stuck on the use of sé, as this is the first person "I know" and that doesn't translate because the article is about giving advice / using the imperative, but the speaker definitely says "se or sé." I thought that agradecerse was the verb leading me to write down "se agradecido" but I don't think you can use the pronominal in this way. So that may be another dead end!
Can you help me make sense of this please?
Saludos. John
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