Spanish language Q&A Forum

i have read somewhere that perfect tense could be used too

for example, he estudiado desde hace 6 meses. = estudio desde hace 6 meses.

is this piece of information wrong? when can we use perfect tense then?

In the Tip it says that the above este etc can be used as demonstrative pronouns. This is not quite correct as demonstrative pronouns are éste ,ésta, They have a hyphen above the e . Where as esto is similar in both cases 

The lesson says that gustaría is only used in the third person singular. However, what if the things that would be liked are nouns, not verbs. Wouldn’t the plural be used to reflect this, as an example “nos gustarían unas cervezas” - we would like some beers?

In the "Examples and Resources" section I found this incorrect translation: 

 En la mañana ordeno mi dormitorio.

All the examples are for when someone disagrees with the first statement. Could these ever be used to express agreement? 

Not a question, but I think a much better way to put this would be ú -> ue, meaning the "u" becomes "ue" when stressed. That holds across all tenses (also for voseo) and needs no special cases at all (assuming the usual ge -> gue to keep the g sound from getting mangled). Turns it into a single simple fact to remember.

Spanish speakers seem to habitually use the imperfect tense for "deber" where English speakers would use the past tense, e.g.,

"Paul owed her his life" => "Pablo le debía la vida" instead of "Pablo le debió la vida"

"You guys must've figured something out" => "Debíais haber descubierto algo" instead of "Debisteis haber haber descubierto algo"

... and sometimes where English speakers would use the present tense, e.g., "But the Lord said he must go to Ninevah" => "Pero el Señor insistió en que debía ir a Nínive" instead of "Pero el Señor insistió en que debe ir a Nínive."

They also use the imperfect in situations that seem to call for a past-tense conditional ("should have"):

Si querías baile, debías haber recurrido a mí  => If you wanted dancing, you should have come to me

I would have expected "Si querías baile, deberías haber recurrido a mí" (should have). Sometimes I do see "deberías haber" for "should have", and I can't see any pattern to why one is chosen instead of the other.

In some cases, the imperfect is used where the present-tense conditional seems clearly called for, e.g., "debias esperar hasta que llamara" for "you should wait until he calls." There's nothing past-tense-ish about that sentence.

"deberían" ('they should") in particular is used interchangeably with "debían" (literally "in the past they must"), and neither is used for past-tense "they should have".

Can someone explain how Spanish speakers conceptualize these tenses of "deber"?  Does the choice of tense work the same way for "deber" as "owe" and "deber" as "must", or are they treated differently?

What is the responses for De donde es usted

Hello,

If I'd to say: "His name is Francisco, but we call him Paco", would it be right to say: "Se llama Francisco pero nosotros se llamamos Paco"?

I get it.  Le is not the correct answer for a reason, but not the reason given in the lesson examples.  Just because the preposition "con" is always followed by a subject pronoun is insufficient explanation.  It implies that "con" was already a given, but it was not.  I believe that "le" is an indirect object/pronoun and therefore not correct.