"Instead" / "Rather"

Question

Is there a way to say "instead" or "rather" that doesn't mean "instead of" / "rather than" (as do "en lugar de" and "in vez de", which are all that I can find in the dictionary).

For example: "I wanted to run, but it was raining so I studied instead." or "Instead, I studied."

Answer 1

You can say en cambio. But I think most of the time you just don't express that word. It's implied. If you take it out of your sentence, it means the same. They'd probably say "Quería correr, pero estaba lloviendo así que estudié."

Answer 2

Jeezle said

I like por eso here. Quería ir a correr pero estuve lloviendo, por eso decidí a estudiar. I go with estuve since I assume you are saying "It was raining (at a specific time and for a specific duration)"

I would think that the imperfect would be more correct for this scenario (in regards to the verb being used to describe the rain).

Estuve lloviendo would be more along the lines of "it rained."

On the other hand, estaba lloviendo indicates that the action was unfolding; that is, the point in time that is being used as a point of reference is the time at which the speaker decided to go running.

The fact that it "was raining" at this specific reference point in time indicates an action that was ongoing. In other words, the rain did not begin or end at this specific point but rather continued to occur (i.e. the action continued to develop, so to speak).

For this reason, I would think that the verb would be required to be in the imperfect.

If you look at it on a sort of time line it might look something like this (note the reference point in this case indicates an event which occurred in the past (decidí a estudiar):

          It was raining/Estaba lloviendo
                   (Imperfective)
                      ?????????????
                            |
                   Reference|Point   
 Time line??????????????????|??????????????????????????????
                            |???????
                   Decidí a estudiar
                       (Perfective)

I'm not so sure. This was a topic in our class last semester, and we went over it pretty well. Any duration of time that is known should be preterite, however, since the time is known to him but not us the reader, it is hard to say, although I must say - jeezzle, Aug 30, 2010

say that imperfect is far more used in situations like this. It was raining - estaba lloviendo. It was raining at 4 o'clock - estuve lloviendo. It was raining when I wanted to go running (at 4 o'clock) estaba/estuve.... is the time known? I can't tell. - jeezzle, Aug 30, 2010

You may be right though. - jeezzle, Aug 30, 2010

Here's the difference, did it start raining and then he couldn't go running? Or did he look outside and see it was raining and realize he couldn't go. To me that is estuve VS estaba. But who knows. Nice clean post Iza, voted you for class president. - jeezzle, Aug 30, 2010

Answer 3

I like por eso here. Quería ir a correr pero estuve lloviendo, por eso decidí a estudiar. I go with estuve since I assume you are saying "It was raining (at a specific time and for a specific duration)"

I agree about "por eso" in that example. As it would happen, the raining/running thing was truly just an example; I actually wanted to use it in, "Él no lo cuento como la historia de un régimen muriendo. [Instead], él concentra en..." - Soninmyeyes, Aug 30, 2010

In that example it seems like sino is the word, doesn't it? - jeezzle, Aug 30, 2010