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
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1011
1
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20111
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30111
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40
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Uses of
tenses