Era difícil

Era difícil
 

Hola a todos:

¿En este caso se podría usar "era", por favor?

Era muy difícil continuar estudiando por el tiempo, pero sabían/supieron que tenían que seguir si querían sacar buena nota. Así que estuvieron estudiando hasta muy tarde.

Gracias

"Era" and "estuvieron estudiando" are right, but "supieron" sounds wrong to me.

"Supieron" makes me think that they had some kind of sudden revelation that they had to keep on studying. :thinking:

Some verbs 'change in meaning' when conjugated in the preterite. Saber is one of those verbs. In the preterite it means found out. Also check out the changes in meaning for querer, conocer and poder.

Correcto, pero también dependería del contexto, ¿no?

Thank you very much

The verbs do not "change meaning," but rather the translations sometimes change.

Check out this essay about the preterite and the imperfect:

http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/serv...3/p0000004.htm

I hope this helps


En cuanto a la frase original, ¿no se podría usar tanto sabían como supieron?

P.ej,

Era muy difícil continuar estudiando, pero sabían (antes, durante y despues)que...

Era/fue muy difícil continuar estudiando, pero supieron (en ese momento, se les ocurrio) que...

Gracias

I meant that the translation changes (that's why I quoted it), but this is precisely why supieron doesn't work like you'd expect in this case. To a native speaker, like AngelicaDeAlquezar, it doesn't mean 'knew' in the sentence you proposed. It means 'found out'. That's why she steered you away from using the preterite tense.

There are cases when the preterite means 'knew', just like you'd expect, but not in this case. The other verbs I mentioned all fall in the same class. Sometimes they don't translate as you'd expect, and it is good to know when this can happen.

Oh, OK.

Thank you

Regards