How to do

Spanish
1

I’m on Green belt with a black stripe and just started on the I know section (around 57%) and some of the examples are confusing me a little.

I know how to speak Spanish
Sé hablar Español
BUT
How to speak Spanish
Cómo hablar español
And
I know how to explain what I mean
Sé cómo explicar lo que quiero decir

So why is the “cómo” missing in the first example?

And, around the 61% mark,
“I want enough chances to practice before I have to leave “ is given as
“Quiero Suficientes cosas para practicar antes de que tengo que irme” but should it not be “quiero suficientes oportunidades para practicar…..)?

Sorry to throw multiple questions at you but they came at me in a heap.

Thanks

2

In Spanish, when you ‘know’ something, it often includes knowing ‘how to do’ something, so the ‘como’ is seen as superfluous, especially when talking about knowing a language.

Sé hablar español is a common way of saying “I know how to speak Spanish”

Yes, that should be oportunidades but it should also be antes de que tenga que irme. Does it not say that?

I’ll have to search for that phrase and fix it.

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3

Hi Deborah, thanks for the response

Yes, it does say antes de que etc but I was only interested in the first part so I left the rest out. Sorry if I caused any confusion

4

It’s just that you wrote tengo que irme - tengo with an ‘o’ - but after antes de que it should be tenga que irme - tenga with an ‘a’ - so I wanted to check that.

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5

Oh, I see, I think that I wrote “tengo que” because, usually, tengo que is something that I must do.
Another question then: why is it tenga que and not tengo que in this instance

Thanks

6

There are quite a few time expressions in Spanish that generate that change (grammatically known as subjunctive) due to the fact that it’s something going to happen in the future, so it’s sort of not 100% certain.

My housemate actually refers to it as the ‘future tense’, which it’s not, but he’s so used to future actions calling for it, that he assumes that’s what it is.

A common situation is with cuando talking about a future action - e.g. cuando vuelvas a casa “when you come home” but there are quite a few stock expressions that indicate something going to happen in the future and they generally all have that subjunctive change.

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7

Thanks Deborah, I shall keep my ears open for those subtle differences in future.

B.T.W. Have you heard yet when the updated app will be released?

8

Not yet, sorry. Hopefully not too far off.

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