Subjunctive exercise 7-9

[laepelba]

I get more wrong each time I do one of these exercises. :(

I have a couple of questions. Thank you, in advance, for any suggestions you can give me!!

1) Mi hermano quiere comprar una computadora nueva pero no sabe precisamente cuáles son los rasgos que más le deben importar.
My question: Why is it indicative and not subjunctive? I had originally used the word "tenga", and I understand the book's use of "ser", but not the use of the indicative....

2) The exercise ends by posing certain "questions" (rhetorical - not meant to be answered) that the author is pondering in a situation with his brother. It is a fill in the blanks exercise, where I am given a verb list to choose from, and I have to find the right word for the context, and then conjugate the verb correctly, and fill in the blank.
I wrote: ¿Qué me recomendarías que haga?
The book said that there are two correct options:
- ¿Qué me recomiendas que haga? OR,
- ¿Qué me recomendarías que hiciera?
So, apparently, I chose half of each correct option. But is what I wrote also correct? If not, why not?

THANK YOU!!!

[aleCcowaN]

About 2) your answer is the same many people use. It's not right nor wrong. It just is. The sentence has the verb "recomendar" in indicative because it's the positive part of the sentence -the action that actually should be performed-; the verb "hacer" is in subjunctive because it is a thing, it is referred -you easily can replace it by infinitive: "¿qué me recomiendas hacer?". You can wrap it up in a direct fashion ("¿qué me recomiendas que haga?") or give it a twist and make it hypothetical ("¿qué me recomendarías que hiciera?") so the person won't feel obliged to give advice or to be responsible for it, nor you won't compromise in following that advice. In these situations conditional "recomendarías" branches all to some magical parallel dimension where "hiciera" is the right tense to match such intangible actions.

About 1) indicative is used as those features are germane to a well informed purchase, so, that is presented in a positive way -remember: indicative shows actions happening and things existing; subjunctive shows the ghost of an action-. Some conditional there ("deberían importar") is OK, but subjunctive "sean" presents the whole situation as ground to a halt -it all is dubious: nothing is known, not even what to do to know it; it would mean something even worse than "having no clue"-.

[laepelba]

About 2) your answer is the same many people use. It's not right nor wrong. It just is. The sentence has the verb "recomendar" in indicative because it's the positive part of the sentence -the action that actually should be performed-; the verb "hacer" is in subjunctive because it is a thing, it is referred -you easily can replace it by infinitive: "¿qué me recomiendas hacer?". You can wrap it up in a direct fashion ("¿qué me recomiendas que haga?") or give it a twist and make it hypothetical ("¿qué me recomendarías que hiciera?") so the person won't feel obliged to give advice or to be responsible for it, nor you won't compromise in following that advice. In these situations conditional "recomendarías" branches all to some magical parallel dimension where "hiciera" is the right tense to match such intangible actions.


I already understood that the first part of the sentence should be indicative and the second subjunctive. What I didn't understand was why "recomendarías" had to go with the "hiciera".

So if the main clause of the sentence is conditional with a verb that requires the use of the subjunctive, then the subjunctive in the dependent clause should be el subjuntivo imperfecto, right? The only way the dependent clause would use the present tense is if the main clause also uses the present tense or the future tense?

[aleCcowaN]

Exactly!