When she woke up, ...

Question

I'm trying to understand one of the corrections I received in my recent post to the thread "Let's talk about (4) : A special guest"

I intended to write "When she woke up, she saw a squirrel".

The corrected phrase is:

Después de que se despertara, vio una ardilla

I don't understand the use of despertara (imperfect subjunctive) here. I would have thought it would be one of the following, with a preference for the imperfect:

Preterite:

Después de que se despertó, vio una ardilla

Imperfect:

Después de que se despertaba, vio una ardilla

Can somebody help me understand this?

Hi Pesta, this might actually be a typo on the correctors part...despertaba and despertara are only different by one letter. - SusanaEspana, Nov 13, 2011

Susana, I did think of that, but I thought the topic might be too extensive to limit it to the thread comments, thus this question thread. Thanks! - pesta, Nov 13, 2011

Answer 1

Hi there, pesta!

Both "después de que se despertó" and "después de que se despertara" (after waking up) are correct, but to me, neither of them sounds like the obvious choice to do.

Cuando se despertó vio...

Al despertarse, vio...

are far more common.

"Después de que se despertaba" is not possible, because imperfect suggests that despertar is a continuous action (as listeners we are actually imagining how she is waking up) , whereas "después de que" refers to this fact as finished. Past.

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Reading your post ( very nicely written) I would still make a couple of suggestions more:

Sería lamentable si no puede que no pudiera sobrevivir en la naturaleza. Sin embargo, en ese día, fue era mi princesa hermosa durmiendo entre mis flores y disfrutando del calor del sol.

Here, imperfect seems the perfect choice

Just an opinion

¡Muchas gracias, Cogumela! - pesta, Nov 13, 2011

You are welcome, pajarillo :) - cogumela, Nov 13, 2011

Answer 2

I would have gone with the preterit because it's a one time, not an on-going, moment.

Después de se despertó, vio una ardilla.

However, you used the phrase "después de que," which always requires the subjunctive.

In fact, your two last sentences are not correct - cogumela, Nov 13, 2011