Spanish language Q&A Forum

Hi,

I was comparing two of the sentences above:

Clara se lava los pies cada día

and

Nosotros nos ponemos crema solar en la cara.

In English, both refer to plural objects i.e. her feet and our faces.  In Spanish, los pies but la clara.

I wondered why Spanish refers to 'la clara' rather than 'las claras' as there is more than one subject therefore more than one object.

Thanks.

Colin

I am having difficulty understanding the difference in terminology between "impersonal se" and "passive reflexive se" and in particular the difference in their translation into English. ¿Puedes ayudarme?

¡Hola!

I would like to pay your attention to the following constructions:

Quién + iba a/podía/podría + infinitivo de pensar, suponer... + que (+ sujeto) +  iba a + infinitivo/condicional/imperfecto de indicativo (+sujeto)

Examples taken from GRAMÁTICA DE USO DEL ESPAÑOL: Teoría y practica C1 - C2 by Luis Aragonés y Ramón Palencia. Unidad 27

¡Quién podía pensar que Lorenzo tenía dos hijas!

¡Quién podría pensar que la empresa tenía pérdidas!

Could you tell me whether the mentioned examples refer to the Present and past tenses are used because of Concordancia de Tiempos or to the Past?

If they refer to the Past, is it possible to use Pesente and Pluscuamperfecto in the second part to express different periods of time?

Regards, 

Alexander

Hola Inma,

In the example: "Esta tarde ayudo a mi madre en el jardín", the point in time when the statement is occurring seems important. Can it not be "esta tarde" at the time of the statement, which would make it the continuous present (even though that tense is not being used, just as the future tense is not being used)? Or is the present tense simply not used in this way?

Hi- I thought pronouns had to come before conjugated verbs. For example, I would think "Explain it to him well" would be translated either "Se lo explica bien" or, if a command,  "Explicáselo bien".  However, in the quiz for this section, the correct answer is verb se lo bien. Can the pronouns be placed after but seperate from the verb?

Thanks

It seems to me that in many cases we could substitute the imperfect with perfect. The main difference would be that in the former we talk about a repeated activity and in the latter about whether something ever took place or a few times at the most.