Spanish language Q&A Forum

Why do you use the definitive article with "cumplir los deseos", but not with "con humildad y esperanza" ?

Hello, I'm slightly confused with the following:

As you can see from the previous examples, when we use deber with this nuance of assumption/wondering, we can optionally use the preposition "de" after deber.

So you are saying that "de" is truly optional and has the same meaning whether "de" is used or not?

Thank you,
Dave

Hola…..¿por qué se usa el imperfecto de subjuntivo con una oración que empiece con “No sabía que_________”.  No entiendo el “trigger” en este caso.

Re my question below is les incorrect because ver is intransitive? 

What if you want to say I have to finish the speech for Thursday (instead of by Thursday) in the sense that it is Thursday's speech? Would it be, Tengo que terminar el discurso que es para el jueves? o el discurso de jueves..? 

Gracias, 

The question did not specify to use the tú or usted form, and in a later question, it did specify "tú."  So I typed "leyó", but was marked wrong. I had "leiste" until I saw "tú" specified later, so I changed it.  Either both should be right or it should be specified, to reduce frustration.  I can see if you were talking to a family member or close friend (in an obvious context), then it should be expected to be "tú." But this was quite ambiguous- you could have loaned a book to a friend or a colleague or boss.

The difference between an "event still to happen" and one that "will happen" can be determined only by the ability to predict the future. It is not a grammatical issue. So neither the indicative nor subjunctive choice is grammatically incorrect. It's a semantic difference, not a grammatical one. I've seen you make very different choices -- different from what I thought was meant. 

I know this keeps coming up, but in the examples we see: “las llaves de la casa”, and “la reserva de hotel”. Both these expressions follow the structure of NOUN + DE + NOUN. Why do we only use “la” for the first one?