Poor thing taking it on and nobody helped!

Garry M.A2Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

Poor thing taking it on and nobody helped!

Wow! Question. How does: "en qué momento se me habrá ocurrido" come to mean: "I'm wondering why I thought this was a good idea"?

Is it a standard phrase for "Me pregunto por qué pensé que era una buena idea?"

Would "en qué momento pensé que era una buena idea?"work?

Asked 1 year ago
InmaNative Spanish expert teacher in Kwiziq

Hola Garry

This is the best way to convey this idea in English. It's a phrase that we use to express surprise/ wondering why we have done something... implying an element of regret. If we used a literal translation for this in English it wouldn't really work: in what moment will this have occurred to me...", so the "wondering why..." translation expresses this nuance better. 

As for the sentence you're suggesting:  "Me pregunto por qué pensé que era una buena idea..." - this is also perfectly correct if we had been translating from English to Spanish. But with these readers we focus on what we want to say in Spanish so that we offer more unusual expressions (in this case more advanced for C1) and then translate into the most natural English with the most accurate sentences to convey these little nuances.

I hope it clarified it.

Saludos

Inma

Garry M. asked:

Poor thing taking it on and nobody helped!

Wow! Question. How does: "en qué momento se me habrá ocurrido" come to mean: "I'm wondering why I thought this was a good idea"?

Is it a standard phrase for "Me pregunto por qué pensé que era una buena idea?"

Would "en qué momento pensé que era una buena idea?"work?

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