Spanish language Q&A Forum

My inclination is to go with the imperfective when talking about someone who has died, as I think of it in terms of general description about who they were: 

“My mother was an amazing woman. She was an excellent teacher, and loved her work.”

Am I correct that the imperfect is most appropriate in this situation? Would putting a time limit trigger the preterite?

 “She was a teacher for 20 years, and loved her work.”

Hi,

I have just completed an A1 test where the missing word(s) were required in this sentence:

Siempre ________ confundo haciendo este ejercicio.

The hint was that the reflexive verb 'confundirse' was used.

My answer was 'Siempre yo me confundo ...' and was marked wrong.  The correct answer dropped the 'yo'.  Is that correct?  Surely, both answers are correct, although mine may not be commonly spoken.

Best regards,

Colin

When you say that we use  "por culpa de" for something  with a negative result and use the example as given above " por culpa de mi novio soy la mujer más feliz del mundo........" Why do you say that this sentence has a negative result?

When you click on this sentence in this lesson, it sounds like Quiero mas peras.  Am I right or am i not hearing it correctly

As if Spanish doesn’t involve enough ambiguous distinctions (par vs. para, ser vs. estar, pretérito indefinido vs  imperfecto, etc., etc.).  Does this issue (perfecto vs. I defy) pertain to Spanish usage outside of Spain? Spoken  as well as written Spanish? Me vuelve loco.  Español es como una mujer ambigua, seductora, y mandona . Bellísima y llena de contradicciones, me vuelve loco

In the sentence "Al calentar la leche me quemé"  I feel like in English we would use a comma between 'leche' and 'me' to separate the two clauses. Is this not the case in Spanish? (I might have it wrong in English.) 

One example of junta means "gathered" instead of "together":

Había demasiado polvo junto en la habitación.There was too much dust gathered in the bedroom.

When do we use this different meaning?

Marcos

Hello,

I'm just wondering about the use of the reflexive comprarse.  It is used in this example:

En esta tienda pueden comprarse unas joyas muy bonitas.You can buy very nice jewels in this shop
Why is the reflexive used here, and in general when do we use comprarse instead of comprar?
Thanks!Marcos

All these verbs are present tense + present subjunctive. Can I use the same construction with the conditional, in those cases where we are “softening” a request?

Such as: “Yo prefería que regreses más pronto.” 

Or does that need a different structure? Thank you!

I see in this lesson that when the subject is the same, we should be using the infinitive. I need to work on that!

Is it ever a  “tolerable” error among native speakers to commit this mistake when using a colloquial register? I frequently want to say things like “Dudo que (yo) pueda hacerlo para viernes” instead of “poder hacerlo.” I know you’re here to teach us the right way!! Just curious as to “how” wrong it is.