What is "que " doing here?!

Question

Hi everybody! what is "que" doing here in this sentence?( que no tengo tiempo!) I think also "no tengo tiempo (I don't have time) is correct, but what does it(que) mean here? should we use it ? and also in other sentence this word is used ( que tengas un buen dia). please help me

Answer 1

When you are responding to the same question several times, usually the natives respond "que......." instead "te he dicho que........".

-¿me llevas a casa en coche?

• lo siento , no puedo, no tengo tiempo.

-venga hombre, ¿que te cuesta? Llevame a casa en coche.

-(te he dicho)¡que no tengo tiempo!.

the second case also is a way of saving words.

(Espero/deseo) que pase un buen dia.

Ah I didn't know that. I guess yeah, depending on the context, it could very well mean this. - HackerKing, Nov 22, 2015

Thanks a lot - caballer0, Nov 22, 2015

De nada - 000a35ff, Nov 22, 2015

Yes, exactly. You can think of it as leaving out "(I hope) that you have a good day." - Winkfish, Nov 23, 2015

Answer 2

Just a friendly reminder that you should use proper spelling and punctuation in your posts.

Could you provide some context? "Que" could mean tons of things.

Without context, I'm guessing it means "because". Much like how we often shorten "because" to "cause", "porque" can be shortened to "que" in informal situations. So the sentence would mean "cause I don't have time".

Interestingly, one of my Colombian friends would shorten both "porque" (because), and "por qué" (why) in informal settings. So "Why are you happy" would become "¿Qué estás feliz?"

EDIT: Just saw your second sentence. Here, "que" followed by the subjunctive means "may". So "Que tengas un buen día" means "May you have a good day" (aka "Have a good day").

Spanish uses these "que-may" constructions (for lack of a better term) a lot more than English does. Stuff like "Have a good day", "Have a great summer", and "God bless you!" all become "May you have a good day", "May you have a great summer", and "May god bless you!"

Thanks - caballer0, Nov 22, 2015

Haha no problem. Nice nickname btw - HackerKing, Nov 22, 2015