Spanish: An Essential Grammar

The future perfect progressive occurs primarily in conjectures:

¿Habrá estado intentando llamar?

Do you think she’s been trying to call us?

Expressions of time with hacer, desdeandllevar

Spanish differs substantially from English in terms of the structures that

are employed to say how long agoan event took place or how long a situ-

ation has(or had) beencontinuing.

Constructions involving hacer

Translating ‘ago’

Hace(or hacíawhen the main verb is in the pluperfect) + a time phrase,

corresponds to English ‘ago’:

La vi hace tres meses.

I saw her three months ago.

Se habían conocido hacía un par de años.

They had met a couple of years before.

Hace/hacía+ que+ verb

This sequence has two meanings. First, it can be used to indicate how much

time hasor hadelapsed since a past event:

Hace solamente una hora que salió.

It’s only an hour since she left.

Hacía solamente dos semanas que se casaron.

It was only two weeks since they got married.

Less commonly hacer is found in the future:

El jueves hará un año que nació la niña.

On Thursday it will be a year since the girl was born.

Second, this sequence can be used to refer to something which began in the

past and is (or was) still continuing. This is often expressed in English as

‘have/has been doing’ or ‘had been doing’.

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11.4

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1011

1

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Expressions

of time with

hacer, desde

and llevar

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