Hace+ time+ que

[Oldman]

Can someone translate/explain the meanings of the following 4 sentences please:
1. Cuanto tiempo hace que estudiaste medicina?
2. Cuanto tiempo hace que no estudiaste medicina ?
3.Cuanto tiempo hace que estudias medicina ?
4. Cuanto tiempo hace que no estudias medicina ?

I think 3) means how long have you been studying medicine and 4) means how long has it been since you have studied medicine.

Are 1) and 4) equivalent ? I don't know what 2) means,

Thank you

[Rusty]

Welcome to the forums!
I have rewritten the questions, adding appropriate punctuation and accent marks. These can be inserted by using the Accents drop-down box.

1. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que estudiaste medicina?
2. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no estudiaste medicina?
3. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que estudias medicina?
4. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no estudias medicina?

The last two questions are using the present tense of estudiar, conjugated in second person singular, so the inquiry is about how long something has been happening, or has not been happening.

Your translation of number 3 is correct.
Number 4 needs to be negated - "How long have you not been studying medicine?" or "How long haven't you been studying medicine?"

The first two questions are using the same verb and conjugation, but in the preterit tense, so the inquiry is about how long ago something happened, but is no longer happening, or didn't happen.

To answer your question, numbers 1 and 4 cannot mean the same thing since different tenses are involved.

Can you come up with the right translations of numbers 1 and 2?

[Oldman]

Thanks a ton for your reply/help...


Here is where I am at:

1) How long ago did you study medicine?
2) How long ago did you not study medicine? - implying that he is currently studying medicine. which is equivalent to "How long ago did you start studying medicine?" equivalent to "How long have you been studying medicine?
3) How long have you been studying medicine?
4) How long have you not been studying medicine (your wording) or (my wording) How long has it been since you studied medicine?

I am concluding that question 1 and 4 are asking the same question (and that questions 2 and 3 are asking the same question) despite both using different wording and tenses.

(Perhaps the negation of the past tense is the present tense, and the negation of the present tense is the past tense? Dare I go that far?!!!!)

Pease help me get this squared away, if my understanding is incorrect on the meanings/translations. I am certainly stuck

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by Oldman

1) How long ago did you study medicine?
"Did study" means studying has stopped.
2) How long ago did you not study medicine?
I would change this to "How long have you not studied medicine?" for simplicity's sake. This means studying medicine never happened in the past. This cannot be construed to mean "How long ago did you start ..." or "How long have you been studying ...."
3) How long have you been studying medicine?
4) How long have you not been studying medicine (your wording) or (my wording) How long has it been since you studied medicine?

Each question is valid and unique (none means the same thing as the other in Spanish (and shouldn't in English).

Originally Posted by Oldman

(Perhaps the negation of the past tense is the present tense, and the negation of the present tense is the past tense? Dare I go that far?!!!!)

No, the preterit tense is used when an action had a start and an end in the past or when it didn't have a start and an end in the past.

Perhaps it's the English equivalent of "how long" that is confusing you.
You'll find other constructions with hace (literally, "it makes") that also pass through hoops to get the right English translation, such as:
Hace mucho que te veo. = I've seen you for a long time.
Hace mucho que no te veo. = I haven't seen you in a long time.
Hace mucho que te vi. = I saw you a long time ago.
Hace mucho que no te vi. = It's been a long time since I saw you (last).

Present tense ver with a time factor (hace mucho) means "has seen" plus the time factor. (It is English that forces us to use the present perfect tense where Spanish uses the present tense. "It makes a lot that I see you.")
Preterit tense ver with a time factor (hace mucho) means "saw" plus the time factor. (Using the past tense verb "saw" makes it much simpler to understand. The time factor is still present. "It makes a lot that I saw you.)
(However, there are those who insist that the present perfect tense (have seen) should be used in my last example, making the translation "It's been a long time since I've seen you." You can choose either translation.)

[Oldman]

Thanks again....

For question 1 yes, the studying had a start and a finish because we are dealing with the preterite. I understand that.
so looking at question 1 and question 4 I still see these questions asking the same thing. You studied, you stopped... How far in the past did this occur ?

Question 2 seems to me to be simply a nonsensical question and question 2 is the one I struggle the most with. If studying never started in the first place, why would someone ask " How long have you not studied medicine? The question would only seem to make sense (to me) if there was a start and a finish.

Anyway, I appreciate your attempt at trying to help me through it. Miyabe if we put question 2, aside, and you don't mind another go at it , could you try to explain the difference just between question 1 and 4 ? Your green check marks seem to affirm my thinking.

[Rusty]

The questions do not mean the same thing. The lesson to learn is how they are different, not how they are the same.

You believe that number 4 is asking the same thing as number 1, but they are NOT the same question in Spanish, so how could they be the same question in English?
Number 1 asks, in the time frame of the present, how much time someone studies (ongoing) ("time factor + study). Four asks, in the time frame of the past, how much time someone didn't study ("time factor + not studied). Focus on the tense. They are different. No English translation should make these equivalent. If we think they're the same, perhaps it's because the English used doesn't make the two ideas markedly different.

Question number 2 makes perfect sense in Spanish, but perhaps you'll never hear it asked. It means studying didn't happen, and someone is asking how long that happened. Asking how many years someone didn't study medicine would be a good question for an interview, where the candidate is now considering medicine but didn't bother to study it earlier.
If I've used English that makes you think these questions are similar or nonsensical, it is because our language is throwing in a timing factor that employs a perfect tense. By definition, the 'perfect' in 'present perfect tense' and 'past perfect tense' means "completed." This is why the British understand "I've seen" differently than we here in America.

One more thing: we often say an action 'starts and ends' when the preterit is in use, but we can equally say that it never happened in the past. That's why the verb is negated. The action did not occur.

[Oldman]

I think it's really the 'negation' that is throwing me off and I really want to try and understand the difference between. "
1. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que estudiaste medicina?
4. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no estudias medicina?

Let me try and go through this and you point out where I am falling apart:

Question 1:

Let's say that I am interviewing you, my doctor, and here I am asking you how long ago you studied medicine. You aren't in school and maybe I want to know how long it's been since you graduated and began your practice. DO you agree or disagree that I am interpreting Question 1 correctly?

Question 4:
I know you are a doctor and I know you studied medicine and here I am asking you how long have you NOT been studying? Isn't question 4 simply a round-about way of getting at the same answer: "How long has it been since you studied medicine."

Where is my logic/interpretation falling apart ?

Sorry if I sound like I am beating a dead horse (and I am not arguing with you).

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by Oldman

I think it's really the 'negation' that is throwing me off and I really want to try and understand the difference between. "
1. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que estudiaste medicina?
4. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no estudias medicina?

Let me try and go through this and you point out where I am falling apart:

Question 1:

Let's say that I am interviewing you, my doctor, and here I am asking you how long ago you studied medicine. (Yes. That is the reason you would ask Question 1.) You aren't in school and maybe I want to know how long it's been since you graduated and began your practice. (Same as before, you want to know how long ago it was that I, your doctor, studied medicine, but that is all the question asks - "How long ago did you study medicine?" If you want to know when I graduated and when I began my practice, those are other questions (neither of which contains hace.) DO you agree or disagree that I am interpreting Question 1 correctly? (Only interpret the question, "How long ago did you study medicine?" Nothing more. )

Question 4:
I know you are a doctor and I know you studied medicine and here I am asking you how long have you NOT been studying? Isn't question 4 simply a round-about way of getting at the same answer: "How long has it been since you studied medicine." (Present tense and hace- ongoing process, simply negated: How long have you not been studying medicine? NOT studying is an ongoing process, just as much as studying is. I simplified answers earlier. But you can't ask question 4, which is ongoing, and translate it into English as "since you studied." That is what question 1 is asking. Past tense, action started/ended).

Where is my logic/interpretation falling apart ?

Sorry if I sound like I am beating a dead horse (and I am not arguing with you).

You're not beating a dead horse. I'm trying to make a point of what the Spanish questions are asking and NOT what the English questions we've been using are asking. I hope you understand.

You can argue that both questions 1 and 4 are asking the same thing, but in Spanish they are not. Tense, ongoing or not, negated or not, plus hace, are hard concepts to grasp at first.

Question 1 and question 4 are not asking the same question in Spanish, so the English translations should not be asking the same questions, either.
Granted, there's always more than one way to translate a Spanish idea into English, and you have done just that.
But, learning how to correctly form the question in Spanish is one thing; translating it into English, another.

[Oldman]

I'm starting to see where you are going....not quite there.... Let me try another.

1. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que visitaste a tu familia ?
2. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no visitas a tu familia ?

3. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no visitaste a tu familia ?
4. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que visitas a tu familia ?


Suppose the last time you visited your family was on 1/1/22 and you stayed for one month and then left and haven't seen them since and today is 2/1/23

Would you mind answering all 4 questions in Spanish and English please ?

[Rusty]

No, I don't mind.
The Spanish questions aren't asking the same thing, but how you word your translation may make you think they are.

Originally Posted by Oldman

1. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que visitaste a tu familia? (How long ago did you visit your family?)
- Hace un año. (A year ago.)

2. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no visitas a tu familia? (How long have you not been visiting with your family? There are other ways to ask this in English.)
- Ha pasado un año. (A year has passed.)

3. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no visitaste a tu familia? (How long have you not visited your family? There are other ways to say this in English.)
- Hace un año. (It's been a year. There's more than one way to translate things.)

4. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que visitas a tu familia? (How long have you been visiting your family?
- No los hemos visto desde hace un año. (We haven't seen them for a year.)

Remember, there's more than one way to translate these questions and answers into English.

[Oldman]

Using Hace + time+ que methodology, how would you ask and answer:

"How long did you visit your family for?" "I visited them for a month" and also, "I visited them for a month a year ago."

[Rusty]

You can't ask questions 1 and 2 using 'hace'. These questions are after the amount of time (period of duration). Study up on how 'durante' is used to ask these kinds of questions.
The first part of question 3 is the same as question 2, so it translates the same way. The last part of the question - "a year ago" - is the only place where 'hace' is used.

[Oldman]

thanks again !

[Oldman]

A native Mexican told me that it is not proper to use "no" and the preterite tense in combination; use one or the other but not both. (at least that is how I understood her to say)

[Rusty]

I don't know what you showed or asked her, nor do I know if she understood it, but either what she said or what you think she said is mistaken.

I suppose the sentences you posted at first in this thread came from your textbook. The same exact sentences can be found elsewhere on the internet. Some can validly complain that the sentences in a textbook sound contrived and that they'll never be used in real life. I agree. You may never use the exact wording anytime in the future, but the structure being taught will definitely be used.

Please try to learn the structure being taught in your textbook, paying attention to when you might use it yourself. Trust that the book is teaching correct concepts and usage.

[Oldman]

yeah, there was one sentence about studying medicine in the text and I've made up all the other stuff about the negations. Here's where I am at, which I think is probably 'just about ' correct:

If you want to know how long someone has been doing something - you use the present tense. How long have you been sitting there? How long have you been eating dinner?, etc,

If you want to know how long ago something happened or how long it's been since you did something, you have two paths, which are different, but essentially get you to the same place : you use the preterite OR you use the negation with the present tense,

The use of the negation and the preterite is the awkward one : How long has it been since you haven't studied medicine? How long has it been since you haven't visited your parents?. How long has it been since you haven't posted a reply to the oldman's thread ? Though maybe technically correct to combine a negative ("no") with the preterite, it seems to be awkward and perhaps not common.

[Rusty]

Negation in the preterit isn't awkward at all, and is used in everyday conversation.

The 'Cuánto tiempo hace + action clause, introduced by que' structure allows for negation in the preterit, as well. Question 2 is all about that, and it's a good question that can be used when asking about a period of time when an action was NOT taken.

I think what makes it seem awkward to you is that you're using less than accurate English wording.
Translate 'estudiaste' as "did study" (since this is a question, English insists we use an auxilary verb and a main verb).
Translate 'no estudiaste' as 'didn't study'.

1. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que estudiaste medicina?
- How long ago did you study medicine?
2. ¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no estudiaste medicina?
- How long ago didn't you study medicine?

Question 2 still sounds awkward, doesn't it?
One thing is clear, though. We are asking about NOT studying in the past.

Let's reformulate the translation of the opening clause (prior to the action clause) to see if it sounds any better.

Instead of opening with "How long ago," let's try "How much time has passed."
To introduce the action clause, let's substitute 'since', because we English speakers don't normally say the conjunction 'que' (that) Spanish requires.

"How much time has passed since you didn't study medicine?"
This rendition of the Spanish question sounds a little better. But we can do better.

We could reduce "How much time has passed" to "How long." Then we can dismiss the conjunction altogether, since it isn't a requirement in English.

"How long didn't you study medicine?"
Better?

This reformulated English translation conveys the meaning of Question 2. It doesn't sound awkward at all.

It's clear to see that Question 2 isn't the same as the other three questions.
Each Spanish question was precisely formulated to ask a certain thing.

The only thing that changed in each question was the action's tense.
When negation was added, the opposing action is being asked.

I hope this helps!

[Oldman]

tbh, I wish a native Mexican would throw in a comment as to the use or frequency of using negation with the preterite. I can't really disagree with you because I am just learning Spanish.

¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no estudiaste medicina?

The thing is, as I understand it, the preterite is dealing with an event that has a start and a finish.

Let's assume that you began not studying at time M (M could be the day you were born). Let's assume that you stopped not studying at time N (meaning that you began to study) and let's assume that today is time. P

Are you thinking the question is asking what N -M is, or what P-N is?

[Rusty]

People who ask about when an action happened are concerned only with when the action started or when it ended. Everything in between was an ongoing process, and the preterit tense can't be used for that.
There are ways to ask any question you can think of, but you shouldn't venture down path after path and expect that all employ the same Spanish structure.


It's true that the preterit is called for when an action had a start and end in the past, but, as I stated earlier, the event may have never occurred. You need to ask the right question to get the response you're looking for. And the response may be "That never happened." That doesn't mean the same thing as "I never started" or "I never stopped."

Let's focus on discussing the structure you wrote in the thread title.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

It's important that you focus first on how the sentences are built, i.e. where the "no" goes in each case, then in what contexts it should be used and in the end, the general idea in English. Notice I didn't say "the translation" into English. This is because many sentences you will find in your learning won't have a perfect equivalent in English, and the more you translate, the less you'll think in English and the less fluent you'll be in Spanish.


As for "hace cuánto tiempo que no + past tense":

(Perhaps the negation of the past tense is the present tense, and the negation of the present tense is the past tense? Dare I go that far?!!!!)

—Never. A negative particle before a verb never will change the tense by itself. I doubt this could happen in any known language.
When the sentence says "hace cuánto tiempo que no estudiaste medicina" would be asking about the moment when the listener made the decision against studying medicine in the past, as the conjugated verb is implying, but is still affecting the person in the present.


First of all, this is not a common case of "hace + que", because this structure is always used to talk about an ongoing situation:
- ¿Hace cuánto que fuiste a París? -> You went to Paris once, but the fact is the situation of not going to Paris is still happening.
- ¿Hace cuánto que estudias español? -> Both situations are ongoing, so the verb "estudias" agrees perfectly with "hace + que".

Now, when we build this structure with a negative particle, we need to consider the ongoing situation as well:
- No hace mucho que vi a Pedro. -> When the negative particle goes in front of "hacer + que", the ongoing situation is still valid. In this case, it hasn't been very long since I last saw Pedro. "Vi" marks a situation that only happened once in the past, and "no hace mucho" allows me to tell my appreciation of the little time that has passed since that happened, and it's still ongoing until I decide it's been long enough.

An ongoing situation agrees with another in the present tense:
- ¿Hace cuánto que no visitas a tu familia? -> Since the situation of not visiting your family is still true, then we use "no visitas"; a negative particle in front of the verb, conjugated in the present, just like "hace + que".

But we have a problem with "no + past tense" in the second verb:
I've had to think about this really hard, because I can't really explain the "grammatical malaise" I'm experimenting with your example.
"¿Hace cuánto tiempo que no estudiaste medicina?" sounds a bit crazy. This "que no" immediately calls for a verb in the present tense. If you ask anyone I know, they will say "that's wrong, you must ask "hace cuánto que no estudias…"
I couldn't find a grammar book or note where I could find an actual explanation why this construction sounds incorrect, but I found a situation where this might make sense for the speaker and the listener: If you both already know that your life was determined by one decision involving not studying medicine, and your friend isn't certain how long ago this decision was made, they might ask "hace cuánto que no estudiaste medicina". However, this is very unusual and I doubt you'll ever find this combination of "hace + que + no + past tense".

So as Rusty has been explaining, my advice is that you learn how to use this sentence in general, and focus on how it's built. I think the most important thing in these examples is how the negative particle is inserted to introduce a different meaning. Just don't despair on unusual constructions. We're here to help with them.