Hace+ time+ que

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oldman
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Hace+ time+ que

Postby oldman » Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:18 pm

Can someone translate/explain the meanings of the following 4 sentences please:
1. Cuanto tiempo hace que estudiaste medicina?
2. Cuanto tiempo hace que no estudiaste medicina ?
3.Cuanto tiempo hace que estudias medicina ?
4. Cuanto tiempo hace que no estudias medicina ?

I think 3) means how long have you been studying medicine and 4) means how long has it been since you have studied medicine.

Are 1) and 4) equivalent ? I don't know what 2) means,

Thank you
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby Querneus » Fri Jan 20, 2023 8:07 pm

I find the #2 and #4 sentences weird with their negation. They seem a bit meaningless to me. If the intention was to ask someone how long ago they stopped studying medicine, I'd be more likely to say ¿Hace cuánto tiempo dejaste de estudiar de medicina? or similar.

I would understand #1 as asking about the other person's graduation. The use of the preterite (estudiaste) is implying it's finished. "How long ago did you finish studying medicine?"

#3 would be "How long have you been studying medicine for?", but mind you that while I accept this construction, I'm personally way more likely to use this other construction:
- ¿Desde hace cuánto (tiempo) que estudias medicina?

This is just my opinion. I'm sure other native speakers might give you different judgements. :)
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby El Forastero » Fri Jan 20, 2023 9:07 pm

Hello, a Spanish native speaker here:

First of all, remember the opening question mark "¿" and the TILDE in "cuánto"

oldman wrote:1. Cuanto tiempo hace que estudiaste medicina?


You're being asked either when did you finish your studies or what exactly the period of time when you studied medicine was. Possible answers:

- Estudié hace 20 años (I graduated 20 years ago)
- Estudié en los 90 (I studied in the 90s)
- Estudié entre 2010 y 2015.

oldman wrote:2. Cuanto tiempo hace que no estudiaste medicina ?


Wrong. It doesn't make sense

oldman wrote:3.Cuanto tiempo hace que estudias medicina ?


You're being asked when did you start your medicine studies, but taking into account that you are still studying. You have neither graduated nor abandoned your studies. Possible answers:

-Estudio desde hace tres años
-Estudio desde 2020

Querneus wrote: I'm personally way more likely to use this other construction:
- ¿Desde hace cuánto (tiempo) que estudias medicina?


Both are right. In fact, you can have more examples of right sentences with unusual syntax. For example "¿Tú estudias medicina hace cuánto (tiempo)?" is completely valid, so does "¿Tú estudias hace cuanto tiempo medicina?", despite being less common.

oldman wrote:4. Cuanto tiempo hace que no estudias medicina ?


You're being asked when did you stop or abandon your medicine studies. But, to be honest, this structure sounds more natural when you talk about a minor skill, o maybe the subject of a given cours, and not your professional studies as a whole. For example, "¿Hace cuánto que no estudias inglés?" is more natural because the answer can be days or weeks. For MEDICINE, it would be better "¿Hace cuanto dejaste de estudiar?"
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Jan 21, 2023 6:23 pm

El Forastero wrote:Hello, a Spanish native speaker here:

This is a good post to bookmark, which I just did. These expressions confuse more than one of us non-native speakers of Spanish.
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby tastyonions » Mon Jan 23, 2023 4:18 pm

The English equivalents of (2) and (4) sound just as weird. "How long has it been since you didn't study / aren't studying medicine?" I've never heard anyone say something like that.
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby harikishore » Wed Jan 25, 2023 10:20 pm

oldman wrote:1. Cuanto tiempo hace que estudiaste medicina?


From my Spanish learning lessons, I've created a belief that the way to ask question is to switch places and start with
¿hace Cuánto tiempo ...?
. Is that not true?
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tastyonions
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby tastyonions » Thu Jan 26, 2023 4:03 am

Either way is fine. You can even leave out “tiempo” as in “¿Hace cuánto que…?”
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby El Forastero » Sun Jan 29, 2023 6:35 pm

harikishore wrote:
oldman wrote:1. Cuanto tiempo hace que estudiaste medicina?


From my Spanish learning lessons, I've created a belief that the way to ask question is to switch places and start with
¿hace Cuánto tiempo ...?
. Is that not true?


No. Spanish is very flexible with the syntactic order, so you can place every sentence component practically in every position you can imagine. However, there are some structures more common than others, and some of them sounds overly-poetic, but not wrong.

For example. For the English sentence How long ago did you read that book? , these sentences are perfectly valid (And in all of them, you can omit the word TIEMPO)

¿Hace cuánto tiempo leíste ese libro? (More common)
Tú leíste ese libro hace cuánto tiempo?
¿Cuánto tiempo hace que leiste ese libro?
¿Ese libro hace cuánto tiempo que lo leíste?
¿Ese libro cuánto tiempo hace que lo leíste?
¿Ese libro lo leíste hace cuánto tiempo?
¿Cuánto tiempo hace que ese libro leíste? (Infrequent, but valid)

And so on.
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby harikishore » Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:40 pm

El Forastero wrote:For example. For the English sentence How long ago did you read that book? , these sentences are perfectly valid (And in all of them, you can omit the word TIEMPO)

¿Hace cuánto tiempo leíste ese libro? (More common)
Tú leíste ese libro hace cuánto tiempo?
¿Cuánto tiempo hace que leiste ese libro?
¿Ese libro hace cuánto tiempo que lo leíste?
¿Ese libro cuánto tiempo hace que lo leíste?
¿Ese libro lo leíste hace cuánto tiempo?
¿Cuánto tiempo hace que ese libro leíste? (Infrequent, but valid)

And so on.


Wow! It looks like all possible combinations are valid :D. Thank you very much for this.

And thanks tastyonions too
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Re: Hace+ time+ que

Postby Kullman » Sat Feb 04, 2023 10:48 am

Depending on the context, the 4th one isn't that weird...

If instead of a university degree, you are talking about a subject, it would be ok to say... "cuanto tiempo hace que no estudias matemáticas"...

In that case, we would say "cuanto tiempo hace que no das matemáticas" instead. This phrase could be used both to teach and to learn a subject.

I know than the purpose of the post was to solve doubts, and not creating new ones, sorry...
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