If a lion could talk--please help correct my Spanish sentence
Dear friends, can you help correct my Spanish sentence. I am learning about subjunctives and conditionals.
I am trying to say in Spanish this English sentence from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The nuances which I am trying to express are in brackets. Note that these nuances reflect my understanding of the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Philosophers may disagree, but we are focusing on language here.
"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."
("could talk" means hypothetical but in reality it cannot happen)
("could not understand" DOES NOT mean that we don't understand him now, but could potentially understand him later if we learn his language. "Could not" here MEANS there is no potential at all of us ever understanding him)
My Spanish attempt is:
Si un león pudiera hablar, no podemos lo comprender."
My reasoning (which might be wrong):
pudiera--because a hypothetical event that cannot happen
no podemos (rather than no podríamos) because "we cannot ever", not conditional on anything.
2 Answers
Your logic is pretty good but I think you are mistaken on podemos. The contrary to fact (therefore subjunctive) verb is pudiera in the first clause although I think you could also say: fuera capaz de.
In the second clause the tense is conditional because it follows a statement that sets up the condition "The if clause" If this then that. It may be more clear in English if you say it "If a lion were able (subjunctive) to talk, we would not be able (conditional) to understand him." So I would use pudríamos. If you use podemos then you would just be saying "we can't".
Si pudiera hablar el león, no lo podríamos entender
