Spanish language Q&A Forum

It says above "if  the sentence has me, te, se, le, nos, os, les then no goes in front of these"

But what about direct  object pronouns los, las, lo, la?

Could you please present a couple of formats for questions in Spanish that would likely elicit answers using the "llevar + gerundio" response?  Are the questions in the present tense?  (The questions in English would be similar to:  How long have you been studying?  How many hours has he been waiting?)  Thank you.

Apropos of ' "Lo que" vs "la cosa que" ',   I sometimes see "cosa que" used to mean "which", as in 

    Querían detenerme por robo, cosa que no hice.

Is this usage correct?   If so, is there a lesson that discusses it?

More examples here:  

    https://context.reverso.net/translation/spanish-english/%2C+cosa+que

Thanks!

After explaining the whole story (which happened "hoy") with preterito perfecto , why did we use  Preterio Indefinido in the end? 

: el profesor me felicitó.

I thought it would have been "me ha felicitado"

When I tried to take the quiz, the questions were posed in English.  Consequently I got zero  However, when I looked at the details correct/incorrect responses, these were presented in Spanish.

Voy a perderme el viaje a Cuba a menos que ________ un milagro. Why is the answer " occura" if it follows an adverbial clause. Shouldn't it be in the subjunctive form?

Spanish speakers seem to habitually use the imperfect tense for "deber" where English speakers would use the past tense, e.g.,

"Paul owed her his life" => "Pablo le debía la vida" instead of "Pablo le debió la vida"

"You guys must've figured something out" => "Debíais haber descubierto algo" instead of "Debisteis haber haber descubierto algo"

... and sometimes where English speakers would use the present tense, e.g., "But the Lord said he must go to Ninevah" => "Pero el Señor insistió en que debía ir a Nínive" instead of "Pero el Señor insistió en que debe ir a Nínive."

They also use the imperfect in situations that seem to call for a past-tense conditional ("should have"):

Si querías baile, debías haber recurrido a mí  => If you wanted dancing, you should have come to me

I would have expected "Si querías baile, deberías haber recurrido a mí" (should have). Sometimes I do see "deberías haber" for "should have", and I can't see any pattern to why one is chosen instead of the other.

In some cases, the imperfect is used where the present-tense conditional seems clearly called for, e.g., "debias esperar hasta que llamara" for "you should wait until he calls." There's nothing past-tense-ish about that sentence.

"deberían" ('they should") in particular is used interchangeably with "debían" (literally "in the past they must"), and neither is used for past-tense "they should have".

Can someone explain how Spanish speakers conceptualize these tenses of "deber"?  Does the choice of tense work the same way for "deber" as "owe" and "deber" as "must", or are they treated differently?