What does creia que me ibas mean?

Question

Good afternoon my friends, once again after translating a sentence I am confused. The sentence is "creia que me ibas a tener un correo" which translates to "thought you were going to have an email", shouldn't this translate to "thought I was going to have an email"? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you

Answer 1

creia que me ibas a tener un correo

The "me" is an indirect object pronoun.

I thought you were going to have a letter for me. (Literally- "to me")

Answer 2

"you were going" because ibas is second-person imperfect.

"me" is an object pronoun, receives the action.

"creia que me ibas a tener un correo"

is literally:

I believed that (to me) you were going to have a letter (email?)

It seems clumsy, because instead of tener I would have expected mandar or enviar.

Answer 3

It's a weird sentence and I'm not sure it's written exactly right but it looks like it's supposed to mean "I believed you were going to have mail for me." I would have worded it differently so it would be less confusing like instead of using creer- to believe I would have used pensar- to think. But now that I think about it; it might be trying to use tener in the preterite which has an alternate meaning (to get) but because it's supposed to be the infinitive form of the verb, you can't tell it's in the preterite.. But I have no idea how you would fix that if that is in fact the case (I'm still in Spanish 3). I may be wrong but that seems to make a little more sense in context.

*i meant "was believing" not just believed because it's in the imperfect form and that makes it sound even more weird.. - E3anna, Oct 24, 2013

that question was yours originally? - chileno, Oct 24, 2013

Answer 4

Hi,

It says "ibas a tener un correo" which means "you were going to ave an email (or letter).

I don't quite understand what the "me" is doing there. It seems to me it shouldn't be there at all.

It looks like they are treating ibas a tener like one verb but to my knowledge that would be incorrect.. Could the Me go after the tener (tenerme) and make it mean you were going to have for me mail? - E3anna, Oct 24, 2013