Learn Hardcore Spanish (Latin America): Mi mentora dice que no debo sentir vergüenza, aunque ella era muy tímida cuando era niña. - My mentor says I shouldn’t feel embarrassed, although she was very shy when she was a child.

You will see mi mentor used for a man.
For a woman, both mi mentora and mi mentor exist in real usage. Mentora is fully correct and increasingly common, but some speakers still use mentor for both genders.

In Latin America you’ll definitely be understood with either, but mi mentora matches the female gender explicitly.

Why do we need que in Mi mentora dice que no debo sentir vergüenza? In English we can say “My mentor says I shouldn’t feel ashamed” without “that”.

In Spanish, when one verb introduces another full clause, you almost always need que as a linker:

Mi mentora dice que no debo sentir vergüenza.
→ literally: My mentor says that I must not feel shame.

You cannot say:

✗ Mi mentora dice no debo sentir vergüenza.

So:

English: She says I shouldn’t do it. → Ella dice que no debo hacerlo.
English often drops that; Spanish almost never drops que in this structure.

Why is it no debo sentir vergüenza and not something like no debo estar avergonzado(a)?

Both are possible, but they’re not quite the same:

sentir vergüenza = to feel shame / to feel embarrassed
- Uses the verb sentir
  - the noun vergüenza.
- Focuses on the emotion itself.
estar avergonzado(a) = to be ashamed / to be embarrassed
- Uses the verb estar
  - the adjective avergonzado(a).
- Focuses on being in a state of embarrassment.

In many contexts they overlap:

No debes sentir vergüenza.
No debes estar avergonzado / avergonzada.

Here, sentir vergüenza is very idiomatic and a bit more general. If your mentor means “Don’t have that feeling of shame in general,” sentir vergüenza sounds very natural.

Why is it no debo sentir vergüenza and not no debo sentirme vergüenza?

Because sentir vergüenza in this sense is:

sentir (to feel) + vergüenza (a noun, “shame”).

We are not feeling ourselves; we are feeling shame, so no reflexive pronoun (me) is needed:

sentir vergüenza → to feel shame
✗ sentirme vergüenza → ungrammatical

You do use reflexive sentirse when it’s followed by an adjective:

Me siento avergonzado / avergonzada. → I feel embarrassed.
Me siento triste. → I feel sad.

But with the noun vergüenza, you use sentir, not sentirse:

Siento vergüenza. (I feel shame.)
No debes sentir vergüenza. (You shouldn’t feel shame.)

Why does no go before debo ( no debo sentir... ) instead of between the verbs, like debo no sentir vergüenza?

In Spanish, no usually goes directly before the conjugated verb:

no debo sentir vergüenza
- debo is conjugated (1st person singular, present).
- sentir is an infinitive.

So the pattern is:

no
- conjugated verb + (any infinitives).
  → no quiero ir, no puedo hacerlo, no debo sentir vergüenza.

Debo no sentir vergüenza is technically possible but sounds very awkward and unnatural; Spanish almost never splits it like that. Always put no before the main conjugated verb.

Why is era used (imperfect) in ella era muy tímida instead of fue?

Spanish uses two main past tenses here: pretérito imperfecto (era) and pretérito indefinido/pretérito perfecto simple (fue).

era (imperfect) is used for:
- ongoing or repeated past situations
- descriptions, background information, characteristics

Era muy tímida describes what she was like over a period of time in her childhood, not a single completed event:

Ella era muy tímida cuando era niña.
→ She used to be / was very shy as a child. (general characteristic over time)

If you said fue muy tímida here, it would sound like you’re treating her shyness as a specific, bounded event, which is not how “being shy as a child” works. So era (imperfect) is the natural choice.

Why is it cuando era niña and not cuando fue niña?

Same reason: era (imperfect) expresses a general, ongoing state in the past.

cuando era niña
= when she was a child (over that whole period)

Cuando fue niña is grammatically possible but sounds odd; it suggests being a child as a punctual event, which doesn’t fit. For “when I/she was a kid” as a general life stage, Spanish uses the imperfect:

Cuando era niña, vivía en México.
Cuando era niño, jugaba mucho fútbol.

You could also say:

cuando era pequeña (when she was little)
de niña (as a child), which is very common and natural:
- Ella era muy tímida de niña.

Why is ella explicitly mentioned in aunque ella era muy tímida? Could it just be aunque era muy tímida?

Yes, it could be omitted:

Mi mentora dice que no debo sentir vergüenza, aunque era muy tímida cuando era niña.

Spanish often drops subject pronouns because the verb conjugation shows who the subject is.

However, including ella can:

Clarify the subject
- We just changed subjects from yo (I) → ella (she).
- Mi mentora dice que no debo sentir vergüenza, aunque era muy tímida...
  Grammatically, era could refer to mi mentora or potentially to yo (depending on context).
- Adding ella makes it crystal clear we’re talking about the mentor.
Emphasize contrast
- Mi mentora dice que no debo sentir vergüenza, aunque ella era muy tímida...
  Emphasizes the contrast: even though she herself was very shy.

So it’s not required, but it helps with clarity and emphasis.

How does aunque work here? Why is it followed by era (indicative) and not a subjunctive form like fuera?

Aunque (“although / even though / even if”) can take either indicative or subjunctive, with a difference in meaning:

Aunque + indicative → the speaker presents the fact as real/known.
- Aunque ella era muy tímida cuando era niña.
  → The speaker states as a fact that she was very shy.
Aunque + subjunctive → something hypothetical, not known, or “even if”.
- Aunque ella fuera muy tímida de niña, ahora es muy segura.
  → Even if she was very shy as a child (whether that’s true or not), now she is very confident.

In your sentence, her shyness as a child is presented as a real, known fact, so the indicative era is the correct choice:

...aunque ella era muy tímida cuando era niña.
= even though she (really) was very shy when she was a child.

What’s going on with the spelling vergüenza? Why is there a ü with two dots?

The two dots are called diéresis (¨) in Spanish. In vergüenza they show how gue/gui should be pronounced.

Normally:

gue and gui → the u is silent:
- gente (hehn-te), guitarra (gi-tar-ra).

With a diéresis:

güe / güi → the u is pronounced:
- vergüenza → [ber-GWEN-sa]
- pingüino → [pin-GWEE-no]

So vergüenza is pronounced “ver-GWEN-sa,” not “ver-EN-sa.”

Could the word order be no debo vergüenza sentir?

No, that word order is ungrammatical in standard Spanish.

The usual order is:

no
- conjugated verb + infinitive + object(s)
  - no debo sentir vergüenza
  - no quiero comer carne
  - no puedo decir la verdad

You cannot split sentir and its object vergüenza like that, and placing the infinitive at the end in this way is not natural in Spanish:

✗ no debo vergüenza sentir
✓ no debo sentir vergüenza

Could I say Mi mentora me dice que no debo sentir vergüenza? What’s the difference with Mi mentora dice que...?

Yes, you can say:

Mi mentora me dice que no debo sentir vergüenza.

Differences:

Mi mentora dice que...
→ My mentor says that... (more general; maybe it’s something she says in general, to people, as an opinion or teaching).
Mi mentora me dice que...
→ My mentor tells me that... (clearly directed at me personally).

In many contexts both are possible, but me dice highlights that this is advice given specifically to the speaker.