on the use of gustar

Question

it was my friend's birthday and he wrote to me to thank me for the gifts i gave him.

what i wanted to write was, you're welcome, i'm glad you liked them. you should use the book to write your stories in. maybe i can read them sometime.

this is what i wrote-

"de nada. estoy feliz que te gustan. deberia usar a escribir sus historias. quiza puedo los leer alguna vez."

could someone please correct the text for me?

Answer 1

Hi, and welcome to the forum. It is required that you use correct capitalization on this site, accents as well, so please take the extra second to do that! You did fine with the use of gustar. There were a few minor errors, though.

"De nada. Estoy feliz que te gusten. Puedes escribir tus historias en el libro. Quizá pueda leerlos alguna vez."

I changed the construction of the second sentence. You could say, "Deberías usar el libro para escribir tus historias", but it seemed logically odd.

"Deberías usar el libro por el escribir de tus historias" would solve that problem as well.

¡Suerte!

thank you. i haven't learnt the subjunctive yet, so i didn't use it. - cheguevarafan, Oct 23, 2011

Answer 2

I think the "estoy feliz que" calls for the use of the subjuctive so... "estoy feliz que te guste(n)" (is it more than one thing?)

debe usarlo para escribir sus historias (are you writing formally or informally?)

tal vez/quizá pudiera leerlas alguna vez (not sure about the "sometime" part)

This is good. I think debería is a little softer than debe, in this case, no? Debe implies obligation. Pueda v pudiera, I am not sure why you would invoke the imperfect subjunctive here. The suggested action is not in the past, but the future. You co - Jeremias, Oct 23, 2011

thanks. but in "debe usarlo para escribir sus historias" i think you mixed up the tú and usted forms, right? - cheguevarafan, Oct 23, 2011