There are tons of articles about many aspects of the Spanish language, but I rarely see anything written about how to say would have, could have and should have, so over the next couple of posts we're going to take a look at this. We're going to start with learning how to say could have in Spanish.
HOW TO SAY COULD HAVE IN SPANISH
This isn't actually as hard as it sounds and I'm going to do my best to explain it to you without a bunch of grammar double talk. Let's get started. The first thing we need to do is talk about the things you need to know to be able to say could have in Spanish.
To express could have in Spanish, you need the verb poder. Poder means "to be able to" which typically gets translated to some form of "can or could", generally speaking.
You also need the helping verb haber. The bonus here is you don't even have to conjugate it, you just use the verb as is.
You'll also need to be able to conjugate the past participle of a verb. All that means is you need to the "-ido" or "-ado" version of the verb. With the exception of a few irregular verbs, "-ido" and "-ado" are the only things you need to form the past participle of a verb. Here's a very nice page that's explains how to do that in plain English.
Forming Past Participles
Rather than go into a long-winded grammar explanation (which I'm not capable of anyway), I'm just going to share some very simple patterns with you and I think you'll find they'll make things easier then you thought. Enough chit-chat, let's get to it.
The basic pattern goes like this:
Poder + Haber + Verb (Past participle)
Now let's expand on that.
I could have
Podría haber + verb (-ido, -ado)
You could have
Podrías haber + verb (-ido, -ado)
He/she could have
Podria haber + verb (-ido, -ado)
They could have
Podrian haber + verb (-ido, -ado)
We could have
Podríamos haber + verb (-ido, -ado)
While those are helpful, nothing beats a few good examples.
Podría haber dormido más tiempo
I could've slept longer
She/He could have danced all night
Ella podría haber bailado toda la noche
Nos podríamos haber ido a la playa
We could have gone to the beach
Not so bad is it?
Even knowing all of the above, reading a few articles and even getting help from my then tutor, I just didn't quite get it, so don't feel bad if you find yourself in the same boat. There were two things that helped me finally start to get a handle on things.
The first one is when I started listening to the lessons in the Learning Like Spanish Crazy Level 3 course. The course dedicates 3 full lessons to this topic, specifically lessons 75, 76 and 77. There are a total of 30 lessons, so you're going to learn a lot more than how to say could have, would have and should have in Spanish. I'm going to write a review of the course shortly, but in the meantime if you need a little extra help with this and your Spanish in general, feel free to check out Learning Spanish Like Crazy Level 3.
The next thing I did was to start using these patterns in my conversations. That finally helped everything sink in, and for good. Nothing burns this stuff into your memory better than using it in real life.
And that's it! In the next post we'll look at how to say should have.
¡Ojála que te sirva!
HOW TO SAY COULD HAVE IN SPANISH
This isn't actually as hard as it sounds and I'm going to do my best to explain it to you without a bunch of grammar double talk. Let's get started. The first thing we need to do is talk about the things you need to know to be able to say could have in Spanish.
To express could have in Spanish, you need the verb poder. Poder means "to be able to" which typically gets translated to some form of "can or could", generally speaking.
You also need the helping verb haber. The bonus here is you don't even have to conjugate it, you just use the verb as is.
You'll also need to be able to conjugate the past participle of a verb. All that means is you need to the "-ido" or "-ado" version of the verb. With the exception of a few irregular verbs, "-ido" and "-ado" are the only things you need to form the past participle of a verb. Here's a very nice page that's explains how to do that in plain English.
Forming Past Participles
Rather than go into a long-winded grammar explanation (which I'm not capable of anyway), I'm just going to share some very simple patterns with you and I think you'll find they'll make things easier then you thought. Enough chit-chat, let's get to it.
The basic pattern goes like this:
Poder + Haber + Verb (Past participle)
Now let's expand on that.
I could have
Podría haber + verb (-ido, -ado)
You could have
Podrías haber + verb (-ido, -ado)
He/she could have
Podria haber + verb (-ido, -ado)
They could have
Podrian haber + verb (-ido, -ado)
We could have
Podríamos haber + verb (-ido, -ado)
While those are helpful, nothing beats a few good examples.
Podría haber dormido más tiempo
I could've slept longer
She/He could have danced all night
Ella podría haber bailado toda la noche
Nos podríamos haber ido a la playa
We could have gone to the beach
Not so bad is it?
Even knowing all of the above, reading a few articles and even getting help from my then tutor, I just didn't quite get it, so don't feel bad if you find yourself in the same boat. There were two things that helped me finally start to get a handle on things.
The first one is when I started listening to the lessons in the Learning Like Spanish Crazy Level 3 course. The course dedicates 3 full lessons to this topic, specifically lessons 75, 76 and 77. There are a total of 30 lessons, so you're going to learn a lot more than how to say could have, would have and should have in Spanish. I'm going to write a review of the course shortly, but in the meantime if you need a little extra help with this and your Spanish in general, feel free to check out Learning Spanish Like Crazy Level 3.
The next thing I did was to start using these patterns in my conversations. That finally helped everything sink in, and for good. Nothing burns this stuff into your memory better than using it in real life.
And that's it! In the next post we'll look at how to say should have.
¡Ojála que te sirva!
