Spanish language Q&A Forum

La vendimia comienza en el antiguo Egipto. Por qué no el pretérito comenzó?

No ________ todo el tiempo a nuestro hijo; necesita espacio.

We can't be watching our son all the time; he needs some space.

(HINT: use modal verb "poder" and the verb "vigilar" for to watch)

podemos estar vigilando

podemos estar vigilandolo

Can we get a lesson on when to use which word? They seem to all be very similar in describing how long something takes.

Could you share the link where you list all the possible/different names of the verb tenses?

Gerunds are nouns formed from verbs.  The "ing" words you are translating here are called present participles.  Gerunds & present participles have the same form in English, but they are different in Spanish.  Eg. I like dancing=me gusta bailar. I am dancing= Estoy bailando. 

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I have gotten confused by a specific use of the personal a.  As I understand it, if you are mentioning a person or group of people, you need a personal a infront of the person.  For example if I am talking about a reporter mentioning Juan, I might say El reportero mencionó a Juan.  It also looks like if I want to say that the reporter mentioned Juan to Ana, I should say  El reportero mencionó Juan a Ana.  

Is this correct?  Is this also a general pattern - i.e. when I would normally use a personal a, but there is an indirect object (Ana), should I always drop the personal a and use the a for the indirect object?

Thanks

Is there a difference between the above options?  It looks like they can be used interchangeably, but I'm not sure.  Here are the examples:

Van a construir un hotel cien por cien ecológico.

Estoy seguro al ciento por ciento.

Thanks!