Spanish language Q&A Forum

How can I know which form of the ordinal number to use? For example, twelfth has three forms. Are there particular circumstances when one is called for in lieu of another?

Sorry for not writing in Spanish. I´m not there yet.W

Hola

¡Lo que charla tu madre! 

y

¡Cuánto charla tu madre! 

estas frases son intercambiables? significan más o menos lo mismo?

(no importa, veo que esta pregunta ya ha sido hecha)

Which tenses do these 3 forms represent? I suppose one is the usual conditional tense

Greetings everyone!
Why is Después de que has lavado los platos podrás ver un poco la tele

incorrect?

Hola Ana, Silvia, e Inma -

In your lesson Conjugate stem-changing-ir verbs (e > i) in the preterite tense in Spanish (El Pretérito Indefinido) - I am wondering if it might be worth mentioning that the guideline applies to the majority of verbs ending with "-e#ir" - because most of them seem to change the 'e' to 'i' in the 3rd person "pretérito indefinido" [where the # symbol denotes a consonant, or two consonants together, or even no consonant as with 'reír'] >

> i.e., almost all of them follow the pattern "servir > sirvió, sirvieron"...

... and seguir > siguió, siguieron [note that 'gu' is effectively just a consonant with its silent u]

I have come across only a few exceptions to that^ rule:

namely, the three "-cer.nir" verbs: discernir, concernir, cernir(se)... the three "-ergir" ones: sumergir, convergir, divergir... and hendir - [e.g., the third person preterite becomes él discer.nió - not discirnió].

There are also one or two [?] defective verbs which behave like that^, for example 'ellos agredieron' (they attacked), not 'agridieron'.

Saludos, David Mc

Do you have se lessons for things like, se me hace, no se te quita, ya no se te nota mucho acento, ya no se les atiende, se percate.  I ask because none of these seem to find homes in the lessons, in order to practice and understand. I mean they are not accidental. Thanks

For this question:

"El guiso solo necesita una pizca de sal. No pongas ____ "

I couldn't decide whether it should be "tantas" or "tanta" because it wasn't clear to me at all whether the pronoun is referring to "una pizca" or "sal". If I recall correctly I put "tantas", attempting to agree with "una pizca" but it was the wrong answer. Is it possible that both might be acceptable in real world speech because of that ambiguity, or am I missing some clear difference?

(e.g. in English "This stew only needs one pinch of salt. Don't put too many" would sound a bit wrong, but technically would be correct for the same reason, in my opinion. Of course you'd usually hear "This stew only needs *a* pinch of salt. Don't put too much.". While salt is an uncountable noun (in most contexts), "pinch" is, of course, not!)

Hi, I had a question about the translation for "What should I do?". In this exercise, it said the correct translation was "¿Qué hago?", but wouldn't "¿Qué debo hacer?" also be correct?

Is the preposition "a" used for other cases in Spanish besides expressing a part of the day?