Spanish language Q&A Forum

Ok, I meant to ask earlier, but when I heard this same phrase for the third or fourth time while watching "¿Quién mató a Sara?" it just really started bugging me: this seems to be a great example of the impersonal ellos form (the whole premise is that he thinks she was killed but doesn't actually know who did it!) but I can't understand why that "la" is there. "La mataron" or "A Sara Mataron" I get, but how isn't it redundant to have both...? 

If anyone knows what's going on here, thanks in advance for any insight you're willing to offer! (but no spoilers please!) 😂 

 I just wanted to add that it seems like a similar thing IS actually done in colloquial English in certain rare cases and the form and nuance is very similar--eg "they say it's tricky to learn" where the "they" is someone unspecified or people in general and not particularly relevant. (In more formal English, other ways of expressing the idea would sound less "colloquial", but it would  sound very normal in conversation.) But what I'm seeing is that in Spanish this has much broader use, and is quite natural in many cases where in english you'd have to use a passive construction (or another pronoun instead to keep the impersonal sense)--eg, "He was robbed," or maybe "someone robbed him", but not "they robbed him" because in English that implies subjects already mentioned or known and wouldn't sound impersonal (at least, not in any dialect I've encountered). Yet helpfully, the Spanish form isn't TOTALLY alien to an English speaker, just a lot more freely used. Gee, isn't language fun?! 🙃 

De lejos, habria es actual en inglais. pero me cuento que utilizo habre.

Hola Inma

In this test question: 

"Aquella chica del colegio, ________ todos se reían, estaba siempre triste"

I managed to get all these correct: de la que, de quien, de la cual. But my answer de que was incorrect.

OK, I admit that I did follow a pattern here and guess that this question required 'de' in front of the pronoun, so I actually have two questions about this:

1) why is 'de' required in this particular structure (but not usually)?

2) why is 'de que' incorrect? (but all the others require 'de')

I ask because I don't see any reference to these nuances in the above lesson

Saludos  

In the quiz question with the answers "We have to be patient with our teenage children.

We need to be patient with our teenage children." 

As a native English speaker, I don't understand the distinction being made between these two options. They seem synonymous. 

Hola,

The first sentence above uses 'mayor' to mean eldest.  How would you say 'elder'?

How can you be sure which is meant between the two?

How do you for the superlatives and the opposites (the least) of the comparatives?

Muchas gracias.

Saludos,

Colin

I have encountered real-life examples using both indicative and subjunctive with "una vez que..." and I'm just hoping to confirm or correct my understanding of how this works, please...? For examples, In an article about animals' senses of smell, in discussing the properties of volatile scent compounds I read "Una vez que se vaporiza, puede extenderse rápidamente por el aire" and in a tutorial for making tortillas mexicanas I found "Una vez que sepas cómo hacer tortillas..." I'm thinking that the first takes the indicative because its describing something factual understood to happen routinely, whereas the second takes the subjunctive because it's referring to something that from the writer's point of view hasn't happened yet or is more a hypothetical idea. Is this an accurate way to understand this or am I missing something...? If this is accurate, does it generally hold true with other, similar constructions like those discussed in this lesson? Thanks in advance, as I appreciate the help!

How does one use porcentajes with this?

Madre Mía ! ... It was probably more like a C2-level translation, not a C1? ... Anyway - thank you for encouraging us to tackle it !

I came across this question in the exercises.

Al profesor le gustaría que los niños ________ en voz alta

I selected the correct answer which was hablara.

However my first intuition was that the answer would be hable.

Hable wasn't one of the options however.

Would hable also be a potential correct answer for this question?

Thank you.