please help! quick grammar question
Hello everyone,
sorry to bother you guys, but what is the correct answer to this problem? I think it should be A, but my teachers says C. I think it's A because the action of not knowing what to do is finished and is over and done with (only once, so it is preterite, not imperfect) Is my teacher correct and why?
Pero un día, el autobús no vino y tuve miedo porque no _________ que hacer.
A) supo
B) conocí
c) sabía
d) conocía
4 Answers
Looking at "tuve", that puts the sentence in the first person pretérito and "supo" is third person so that would not fit the sentence. "Supe" is first person but not on the list. Additionally "supe", or anything in the pretérito of "saber" usually means to have found out, It could only be c). The action of not knowing was continuous and it's completion was not indicated, so imperfect indicative fits.
Your teacher is right because the action of having fear takes place within the timeframe of not knowing, so we use imperfect for this larger timeframe. However, from this short phrase I have the feeling that someone is waiting for a specific bus that doesn´t arrive, so in this case it should be "el autobus" and not un autobus.
| Supo | is for him, her or it. ( for third person of singular) Always! And |Sabía | is for first person of singular. I (yo) (=
I would say e) supe, because the speaker does the action, and it's over, so it would be preterite, first person. (A) "supo" is preterite, third person (él, ella, eso).
If something were to happen later, it would be "sabía", as in "no sabía que hacer, hasta que mi mamá me dijo", but as you say, as the sentence is, the action is finished.
