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Subjunctive: Feelings/Opinions with present/past tenseThis is the place for questions about conjugations, verb tenses, adverbs, adjectives, word order, syntax and other grammar questions for English or Spanish. |
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Subjunctive: Feelings/Opinions with present/past tense
I believe one of the rules with subjunctive is that feelings and opinions trigger subjunctive but can a present tense opinion be used with past tense subjunctive? I believe that in Spanish, if you use present tense, you must keep the whole sentence in present and past with past.
Also, the past tense subjunctive is used when something is no longer possible or isn't possible now but possible later? I only know how to use them in "si" statements but don't know how to use them outside of the 2 examples below. Si hubiera ido allá, lo habría conocido mejor Si fuera rico, compraría un carro I want to say, "It's weird that my Spanish professor is American and studied in Spain. She speaks very weird." Es extraño que mi profesora de español sea americana y estudiera en españa. Habla muy rara |
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The subjunctive mood is used in a variety of ways. In your post you refer to two distinct usages:
1. Expressing subjective opinions about something, and 2. Conditional statements, specifically counterfactual conditional statements. Conditional statements ("If X, then Y") have requirements for coordinating the tense and mood of the two clauses; the choices depend on the type of conditional statement. You cite examples of the 2 types of counterfactual conditional statements, which are sometimes called conditional type 3 (your first example) and conditional type 2 (your second example). Expressing subjective opinions about something allows a much greater degree of flexibility between the tense of the verb in the independent clause and the tense of the verb in the dependent clause. In particular, if you are expressing an opinion in the present about some event in the past, the main verb is properly in the present tense and the dependent is properly in the past tense. "Es extraño que mi profesora de español sea americana y estudiera (check conjugation chart for -ar verbs) en españa (names of countries are capitalized). Habla muy rara (Is your professor strange? Or is her speaking strange? Adjectives inflect for gender and number; adverbs do not.)" Aside from the errors I've noted, your translation seems reasonable to me. Last edited by wrholt; September 16, 2015 at 09:25 AM. |
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America (in Spanish) goes all they way from Canada to the Cono Sur. "Es extraño que mi profesora sea estadounidense." Also, "weird" is a vague term that conveys no real information. Is her accent funny? Is her vocabulary unusual? How would you know? |
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As for the American part, in English, I can't think of anything else to call a US citizen besides American and we just literally translate it to americano/a even though we learn estadounidense which is quite a mouthful. I think I had the same conversation with a few Colombians while I was there that everything from Canada down to Chile is Americano. Last edited by Roxerz; October 12, 2015 at 03:16 PM. |
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