"Asegurar que..." ¿subjuntivo o indicativo?

Question

¡Hola a todos!

I'm writing a story for my Spanish class and I'm just having trouble with one line (of dialogue). I want to say: "I assured him that it wasn't possible" and I have translated it as "Le aseguré que eso no era posible."

I realise it's a very literal translation, but I think it's correct. When using asegurar, the subordinate clause contains something that is known for certain (or that the speaker at least believes to be true) so you would use the indicative, right? And I don't know why exactly I used imperfect, it just sounded right. Anyway, any possible help/confirmation/correction would be really appreciated.

gracias de antemano =) Grisham

P.S. before anyone says anything I do know about the translation feature. It is great when trying to understand the general meaning of things but not so great when your teacher is taking off 3 percent of your mark for every grammatical error, no matter how small

Tiene un poco de reputación...invito yo. - webdunce, Jan 31, 2011

Answer 1

Indicative is used when you want to inform about what you think, guess, know... which is precisely what you do when you assuring someone about something, so subjunctive makes no sense here.

when your teacher is taking off 3 percent of your mark for every grammatical error, no matter how small

I wonder whether your teacher is error-free too, hehe.

Answer 2

The natives usually don't come out at this hour so I will answer. "Le aseguré que eso no era posible." sounds right to me. I would choose era there over fue but I could be wrong I am not native.

As for whether to use subjunctive after asegurar que, I think you can use indicative or subjunctive depending on what you want to say, but I don't know all the details.

The reason I like era here is because imperfect can be interpreted as "going to" on occasion like "I assured him that that wasn't going to be possible" whereas fue, to me, would mean "I assured him that that wasn't possible" at a very certain moment in time, like it wasn't possible for a cricket to cross a river at that very moment or something. And I think sea would change asegurar into something else in it's meaning.

All of this is speculation so don't accept it, and wait for a native if you can. Gracias....

Thank you! I would vote you up if I could but I currently lack the "reputation" to do so. - grisham, Jan 31, 2011

Answer 3

Here you're using asegurar as a verb of communication ("promise", "claim"), so the indicative would be correct the way you're formulating the sentence.

If you had used asegurar(se) as a verb of influence ("to make sure"), you'd use a different set of rules, and the subjunctive would be appropriate.