Spanish: An Essential Grammar

In this usage Spanish has the presenttense where English has the perfect,

and it has the imperfectwhere English has the pluperfect:

¿Cuánto tiempo hace que la visitas?

How long have you been visiting her?

Hace mucho tiempo que no vienen.

They haven’t been coming for a long time.

Hacía dos meses que no lo veían.

They hadn’t seen him for two months.

Desde + hace/hacía

Desdecombines with hace/hacíato refer to something which began in the

past and is/was still continuing. Therefore, it offers an alternative to hace/

hacía+ que above:

Trabaja para nosotros desde hace dos años.

He has worked for us for two years.

Estaba aprendiendo español desde hacía un mes.

I had been learning Spanish for a month.

For que desdesee 12.2.2.1 and for desdeas a preposition see 21.8.

Constructions involving llevar

Routinely in speech, the verb llevaris used to indicate how long a situa-

tion hasbeen continuing (with llevarin the present tense) or hadbeen

continuing (with llevarin the imperfect tense).

Llevaris followed by a location phrase, a past participle or a phrase intro-

duced by como‘as’:

¿Cuánto tiempo llevas aquí?

How long have you been here?

La puerta lleva rota un mes.

The door has been broken a month.

Adriana llevaba dos años como directora del colegio.

Adriana had been the principal of the school for two years.

11.4.3

11.4.2

1111

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1011

1

12111

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

20111

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

30111

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

40

41111

11

Uses of
tenses

142