Spanish language Q&A Forum

“I am confused when " preterito " is appended to most of the tenses. This practice is not widely used in Spain or Latin countries. Why not use the tenses which are commonly used. I know that the preterite is used for past tense so when preterito perfecto subjuntivo is mentioned I expect that the past subjunctive is meant NOT the perfect subjunctive! I wonder whether other participants experience the same problem.“  In school, we never learned the English equivalents of these various subjunctive terms.  We didn’t really learn much about the subjunctive in English at all.  It was a whole new concept beginning to learn it in Spanish.  How is it taught to Spanish speaking children? Do they find it confusing?

Hi, why is it 'esto es' and not 'eso es', as it  is translated as 'that is'?

Thank you,

Jan

My answer:  Comprend tanto carne que pescado.   this was marked wrong.  Why would it be tanta when carne is masculine?

I am confused about the translation for a section of this exercise. That section is:  "I like King Baltazar". For this, I wrote "A mí me gusta al Rey Baltasar", but the corrected answer/translation was presented as "A mí me gusta el rey Baltasar". I thought the preposition "a" needed to be inserted after use of gusta if the reference was to a person (in this case "rey Baltasar" --- lower case in "rey" notwithstanding). Apparently, I am wrong. Could you please explain why "el" and not "al" was correct?

Pati Ecuamiga

Hello,

En él puedes percibir 

I assume this translates to 'In it you can perceive'. I did not know that 'él' can be use for 'it'.

Thanks

Amrutha

I'm having trouble consistently distinguishing between using 'a' or 'en' when talking about being somewhere.

For instance, in the dialog, "... Alberto estará  en la reunión...", 

Would we say "estará en la reunión" to mean someone will be 'in' the meeting, while "estará a la reunión" has a connotation indicating a location 'at' the meeting?

Or is it always customary to use 'en' in cases like this?

Hola, 

Terese dice que " a mi no me gusta el frio y por eso prefiero viajar en otono o invierno a paises mas calidos". 

pues, si no se gusta el frio, porque viaja en otono o invierno?? pienso que hay una problema en la oracion. o hay una cosa que no yo entiendo:)

hasta luego!

Hi,

The translation given for the above is 'You apologised to me'.

I thought it meant 'You asked me for forgiveness', because You were doing the asking.  Would 'apologised' not be a different word?

I know that I may translating more literally, but I am I completely wrong?

Saludos,

Colin

I missed “que” in my comment below. Shirley.