please explain use of desde, hace and desde hace

Question

please explain use of hace, desde and desde hace.

Answer 1

One more thing:

There is also the use of desde and hasta in the same sentence.

I know you asked about hace, but I got hasta and hace mixed up when I started to learn, so just in case you have this problem, too, here goes...

When used in the same sentence, "desde" means "from" and "hasta" means "until."

So, if someone asks you about how long you lived in a place, you can say:

Vivi'a en Pensilvania desde 1990 hasta 2009.

I lived in Pennsylvania from 1990 until 2009.

If you are still living there, you just use the desde:

Vivo en Madrid desde diciembre.

I live in Madrid since December.

And, if you want to say how long it's been since something happened, you use hace:

Hace nueve meses que me mude' a Madrid.

It's been nine months that I moved to Madrid. Or...

Nine months ago I moved to Madrid.

When you want to say some period of time "ago" in English, you need to use "hace," accepting that while the meaning is close, it is not a direct translation and you will have a different sentence construction.

I'm fairly sure I have this right. Any mistakes, please correct.

"Vivía" has an accent; "Pensilvania" should use Spanish spelling; "diciembre" should be in lower case; "mover" is not correctly conjugated (it should be "moví"), but this verb cannot be used here: it should be "mudé" (from "mudar") - lazarus1907, Oct 3, 2010

Thanks for the corrections! At least I got the desde/hasta stuff right! - JoyceM, Oct 3, 2010

Answer 2

desde is used to indicate a point of time or location. In the meaning of time it can be translated with since.

hace is a verb that doesn't have a counterpart in English. The English construction is: It has been a time that ... It means that the start of an action is known and the action doesn't go on anymore

http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/7226/desde-desde-hace-desde-que-hace

another link

"hace" is a verb (hacer). - samdie, Oct 3, 2010

"Hace" a preposition?????? - lazarus1907, Oct 3, 2010

Gracias lazarus :) copié el texto tal cual del enlace y ni me fijé - matujd, Oct 3, 2010

The structure with hace plus time is like saying "it makes ____ time that [someone has/had done something]. That's how I remember it. - jhodges18, Nov 6, 2010

Answer 3

hace is from hacer and it means ago in this case hace dos años, two years ago.