Nuevo uso de hacerse?

[BenCondor]

Hola,

I'm trying to translate this sentence:

Una pregunta similar se hicieron Alberdi, Sarmiento y quienes hace casi un siglo y medio trazaron el diseño de la Argentina moderna.

A few questions:
1) Does hacerse have a meaning like "to occur to" or "to ask about"? I haven't found any listed uses of hacerse that seem to fit here.
2) I don't understand "y quienes". I'm scratching my head trying to understand how this makes sense in this sentence.

Thanks for any help!

[chileno]

se + hacer

to make +subject self/selves

Does it make sense?

[BenCondor]

Hi,
I'm sorry I'm not sure I understand. Could you render the sentence in English with your idea?

[LearningSpanish]

In Spanish you make questions 'hacer preguntas' instead of asking questions (preguntar preguntas)

My attempt to translate it (although I'm still learning too so you may want to wait for a second opion es ...


A similar question was asked by Alberdi, Sarmiento and those who almost a century and a half ago designed (drew up the plans) of modern Argentina.

[Rusty]

Good translation!

@Ben: The usage of 'se' is not always reflexive. In your sentence, it is being used to render an impersonal subject. This is a very common usage, and is the most common way to translate a passive voice English sentence into Spanish. You can search here in the forums for "impersonal 'se'" to learn more.

[BenCondor]

Hi all,
Thanks for the replies!
It looks really obvious now that I see LS's translation. I'd considered the Passive Voice idea but couldn't see how it would work either. Now it all makes sense.
Thank you all!
Ben

[aleCcowaN]

I think here's:

se hicieron = 50% of 'was asked (by them)' + 50% of 'they wondered'

Maybe, it's closer to "they thought about the same question" or "considered".

Hacerse una pregunta ---> in essays, it means to consider a problem, with a huge component of trying to carefully delineate what the problem is (defining the pregunta) and/or discover the best approach to it. Also it may imply the expectation of some eventual breakthrough involving an age-old problem.

Los médicos se preguntaron durante décadas si muchas de las úlceras gastroduodenales podían tener una causa infecciosa ...

Algunos de los padres fundadores se preguntaron si insistir en la pronta abolición de la esclavitud o incluso en restricciones a ella no provocaría una ruptura de la frágil unión.

Los economistas se preguntan cuál sería la combinación de creación monetaria pura y tasa de interés que pudiera sacar a la Eurozona de su marasmo.

[BenCondor]

Hi,
What threw me was the fact that I didn't see that "hace casi un siglo y medio" was a subclause. This isn't essential to the core idea of the sentence but is added to point out (and probably to stress) the time since the plan/design was made.