How do you conjugate a verb following Hacer in Hacer + tiempo form
For example, how would you conjugate it in this phrase? "Hace unos días Victor (decidir) pasar dos semanas en la playa de Hawaii" What if it was past tense (Hacía)? Ex: "Hacía mucho tiempo que Panchito no (oír) ni (leer) inglés." What is the difference between having the que there and not having it?
Thanks so much!
2 Answers
Hi DJ,
My first suggestion is that you watch lesson 3.4.
My second is to check this page as a reference.
Now, with that said, here is my current understanding.
"Hace unos días Victor (decidir) pasar dos semanas en la playa de Hawaii"
This should require a que. The only way, if you are expressing time, that it shouldn't require que is if you put Hace + tiempo at the end.
So it would look like this Victor (decidir) pasar dos semanas en la playa de Hawaii hace unos dias.
For hace, how you conjugate decidir depends on what you mean to say. Watch the video to understand. Preterite means it happened a certain length of time ago. Present means it began at one time and continues still.
"Hacía mucho tiempo que Panchito no (oír) ni (leer) inglés."
Hacía + tiempo + que + imperfect is the usual construction for time with hacia.
In this case it would mean "Panchito had not heard or read English in a long time."
Hacia is for describing how long things had been going on in the past.
I suppose you could say hace uses the present as a reference point (Either how far away from the present it ended or how long ago you started doing it to reach the present.)
What is the difference between having the que there and not having it?
There shouldn't be any except for the placement in the sentence of hace + tiempo.
Your 1st sentence looks incorrect.
Notice that we need to use the word que when we put the Hacer time expression first (but we don't use que if the verb comes before the Hacer time expression.)
This one shows hacer used with imperfect tense and time expression
