Hey, if i put "que" in this statement is it incorrect?

Question

Hace treinta minutos "que" Marisa y Marta prepararon una ensalada para nuestro almuerzo.

having "que" there makes the sentence incorrect right?

Thanks for all the help guys, now it makes sence :3 - diablo630, Aug 24, 2014

sense* >.> - diablo630, Aug 24, 2014

Answer 1

Hello diablo,

Welcome to the Spanishdict forum.

You said,

Hace treinta minutos "que" Marisa y Marta prepararon una ensalada para nuestro almuerzo. having "que" there makes the sentence incorrect right?

Well, the authors of Barron's 501 verbs Christopher and Theodore Kendris , in talking about the uses of the present ndicative say that among other things, it indicates:

"An action or state of being that ocurred in the past and continues up to the present. In Spanish this is an idiomatic use of the present tense of a verb with hace which is also in the present" Example: Hace tres horas que miro la televisión. = I have been watching television for three hours.

I would therefore say that your use of hace here is correct provided that you write the rest of the sentence in the present indicative tense like in the example above that the authors give!

Hace treinta minutos que Marisa y Marta preparan (should be present indicative not preterite: prepararón) una ensalada para nuestro almuerzo. = Marisa and Marta have been preparing the salad for our lunch for thirty minutes.

Other examples of using the present tense in this way can be found by following the link to this page You will need to read down the page. enter link description here

I hope this helps

How exactly would you say they made the salad 30 minutes ago, I wonder? - bosquederoble, Aug 24, 2014

Bosque, I would say: Hace treinta minutos prepararon (using the preterite) la ensalada.:) - FELIZ77, Aug 25, 2014

And would you say Hace treinta minutos que prepararon la ensalada, as almost every link I entered in my answer says is correct, is wrong? - bosquederoble, Aug 25, 2014

Answer 2

"que" sounds off here.

You can use it though in other situations.

El jefe ha decho hace 30 miuntos que no trabajaremos este lunes.

Answer 3

Almost every lesson I have ever seen uses que if the hacer phrase precedes the event being described (and not if it follows):

http://www.spanishdict.com/topics/show/96

http://www.spanish411.net/Spanish-Time-Expressions-Hacer.asp

http://www.drlemon.com/Grammar/Hacer.html

http://www.sampsoncc.edu/staff/mmoore/hace_que.htm

http://www.rocketlanguages.com/spanish/learn/how-long-in-spanish/

http://www.elearnspanishlanguage.com/grammar/verb/hacer2.html

This is the only one that doesn't in the preterit, although it does with the present:

http://spanish.about.com/od/idiomsandphrases/qt/hace_ago.htm

So it certainly would not seem to be wrong to use it and I tend to use que following the pattern of most of the lessons. However The guy who does the about.com (Gerald Erichsen) has been very knowledgeable in my experience, so I would be interested as well in a native opinion on what is acceptable, and what is preferred.