Shortening sentences by removing verbs?

Question

I was doing a few lessons about shortening sentences by using "El, la, lo" etc, and it got me thinking: Can the same be done with verbs? The reason I ask is because of the last couple years of Spanish classes I've had, none of my professors have mentioned anything like this, so I'm not even sure it's possible.

An example I can think of is this... "You should have left it alone, but you didn't."

Is there any way to translate the bold into Spanish? Since I doubt it can be done literally. Or does the sentence in Spanish have to read something like: "You should have left it alone, but you didn't leave it alone."

Thanks.

EDIT: Another sentence I can think of is "He tried to eat the food, but he couldn't." I'm not sure if this would change the layout of the sentence or not, but it'd be great if you could translate both examples. (I would guess: él trató de comer la comida, pero no pudo."

Thanks again!

Answer 1

"He tried to eat the food, but he couldn't." Trato de comer, pero no pudo................................. Trato de comer la comida, pero no pudo. "la comida" is not needed. see disclaimer........................

Disclaimer, see Gus rule above.

Answer 2

You should have left it alone, but you didn't Not really here is my try ( See quote below)

Lo debieras haber abandonado, pero no lo hiciste.

Gus rule, There are no absolutes in language.

haber - 0074b507, OCT 10, 2009

Answer 3

Hi Dan I´m not good at Spanish but my guess is that "but you didn´t" is not translated - or translatable directly into Spanish. What you are really saying is "but you didn´t leave it alone" (the verb leave is implied).

Pero no lo hizo. = But you did not do it.

It would be interesting to see what the experts say.