Spanish language Q&A Forum

The examples all list a couple actions that are being requested or suggested.  Would it be just as normal to use it when there is just a single action being requested?  Like "Pones los papeles sobre la mesa" would sound as normal as a command as "Pon los papeles sobre la mesa"?  As a non-native speaker, if I talked that way would people think I don't know the imperative?

I'm assuming that before using this form the paragraph would start out using a tense that would ground the event in the past.  Thus I'm assuming you would not start out saying "Martina se llevará una gran sorpresa al ver de nuevo a su madre".  You'd instead start out with saying ""Martina pensaba que su madre había fallecido" or something else that signals we're talking about the past.  Is this right?

Hi, Kwiziq has dropped a lesson when to use pretérito indefinido vs  simple perfect into my lesson plan which is headed ‘for South American learners’.  It identifies me correctly as learning Iberian Spanish. I don’t want to get confused with SA grammar. How can I remove it please?

I was always told that he, has, ha were present perfect and hube, hubiste, hubo were preterite perfect. I find terminology differs from course to course - is there a standard reference that explains the conventions on naming tenses?

Darrell

I use the app SpanishDict to help me check myself on certain concepts, especially on conjugations. For this concept, the gerund, the app uses past and present participles. Frankly, I did not receive a whole hell of a lot of instruction when it came to the difference between a participle and a gerund when I was younger but hey, I turned out ok! I have gotten the gist but the two things don't do the same thing  in Spanish as they do in English. I asked a Spanish professor friend of mine about this and he said one of them  (I can't remember which) was the gerund and the other is the participle. Is he correct? I got a questions wrong because I typed one form but it was actually the other. Also, is SpanishDict throwing me off?  

In the reading, the sentence "A que no te lo imaginabas?" is translated as "Can you imagine?".  It seems like that translation is missing some nuance.  After reading through the corresponding lesson, it seems like more accurate translation would be "I bet you wouldn't have imagined it!".  Would this be accurate, or am I missing something?