"You should have been there, man!"

Question

Hi everyone

An other question, how do you say "You should have been there!" when you're telling someone about something fantastic that the person missed? In the title I put the "man" there because I don't mean it as "It was your duty to be there, so you should have been there" but more as "what a pity for you that you missed that show, it was awesome, you really should have been there".

The reason why I'm pointing this aspect out is because if you type it into Google Translate it says "que debería haber estado allí" but a construction with deber expresses duty, right? I also don't really understand why there should be a que in the beginning of the sentence?

Thank you for any help I could get

Carolina

Answer 1

When we add the suffix ía to deber, the word becomes should rather than must, hence: debería. And with the auxiliary verb haber in this case, the past tense of an action that did not take place is created.

"You should have been there, man!"

"¡Hombre, deberías haber estado allí!"

All right, thank you :-) So the "que" in the translation from google translate shouldn't be there at all? - carolinaje, Nov 30, 2013

"Qué" is OK to use here, it´s an interjection. I didn´t use it so as to provide a more direct translation of what you wrote, but in most cases direct translations are not possible - 005faa61, Nov 30, 2013

Answer 2

As Julián says, or, I think you could go for:

¡Ojalá que hubiera estado allí!

Answer 3

"que debería haber estado allí" translates as "that you should have been there". I think it helps with the theoretical aspect of your statement.