Spanish language Q&A Forum

It's not quite true that English has only two demonstratives - there's an older word still in common use at least in the North of England, usefully equivalent to 'aquel':

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/yonder

It's in wider use in the phrase 'wild blue yonder'

why does "a tan solo 2 minutos de empezar" mean "2 minutes before starting" but "a los 2 minutos de empezar" mean "2 minutes after starting"?.. why does the meaning change because of an added word?

Hola!

I started doing the relative pronoun lessons and quizzes before I even had a complete understanding of what a relative clause was!! (Maybe some different organization of the B2 lessons would alleviate this for other students???)

I needed more understanding so I did a search, and lo and behold, I found this lesson and the lights came on!! 

I get it now and it makes perfect sense to me. 

Thank you so much for this lesson Inma! (I see it's quite recent)

As a forever student, the lessons and explanations make learning Spanish so much fun for me and have taken my studying and learning to a whole new level. 

I really love the dictation and writing exercises!!  I was wanting to train my ear to hear better and these exercises fit the bill perfectly!!

 I'm so glad I found Kwiziq!!

Muchas Muchas Gracias y Feliz Navidad!!

One of the options for a mini kwiz question, ""Suspendió el examen, no porque ________ sino porque ese día no se sentía bien." As I understood it, no porque could be used with either subjunctive or indicative and not change the meaning. Why isn't "no porque no iba a estudiar" an option along with the other two examples (which were subjunctive).

El concepto de antención plena

la llegada de la atención plena

Why is the article used in the second pharse but not in the first ?

Below is the text from the lesson explaining your options with "por si/por si acaso". All of the examples use the imperfect subjective, but the fact that was the only option wasn't really clear until I read through the comments/questions.

From the Lesson: They introduce a subordinate clause expressing a condition. They can be followed by the subjunctive or the indicative.

 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?! 🙃