Llevar vs Seguir

Question

Could seguir + infinitive be used in a similar way to llevar here? Perhaps...Sigo trabajando en este colegio tres años= I've continued working in this college for three yearsOr would that have to be 'He seguido trabajando...'I also note the absence of a preposition (por, durante etc) before the time/period phrase in the examples. Is it not necessary with llevar?Saludos

Answer

Hola Graeme,
it is not quite the same. When we use "llevar + gerund" we refer to the period of time from the start to the present time; so, for example:
"Llevo trabajando aquí dos meses."
The focus here is "I started 2 months ago and I am still here."
However,
"Sigo trabajando aquí dos meses"
wouldn't make sense, because if you use "seguir + gerund" you must have done that action for some time and then you would add "y sigo +gerund". So, it would be something like:
"Empecé a trabajar aquí hace dos meses y sigo trabajando aquí."
If you say "sigo + gerund" you don't use any "time period" afterwards.
The absence of preposition por/durante is not unusual when we talk about "a period of time", we actually tend to omit it or if using any, it is a lot more common in Spain to use "durante".

"Llevo trabajando aquí dos meses." (the most common way)
"Llevo trabajando aquí durante dos meses." (less common)
"Llevo trabajando aquí por dos meses." (hardly used)

Saludos
Inma

Answer

Thanks Inma. Another very useful answer, and especially interesting regarding the Spain-centric preposition. I've been using por for as long as I can remember!