Breakdown of Por suerte, encontramos un atajo y evitamos el atasco.
Questions & Answers about Por suerte, encontramos un atajo y evitamos el atasco.
Por suerte literally means “by luck” and is best translated as “luckily / fortunately.” It’s a very common, natural expression in Spain.
- por suerte = luckily, fortunately
- Neutral and very common in spoken and written Spanish.
- afortunadamente = fortunately
- Slightly more formal or “written,” but also very common.
- con suerte = with luck / if we’re lucky
- Usually means “if things go well / if we are lucky”, not “luckily” about something that already happened.
- Example: Con suerte, llegaremos a tiempo. = With luck / If we’re lucky, we’ll arrive on time.
So in your sentence, por suerte is the natural choice to say “luckily.”
Con suerte would sound more like talking about a future possibility rather than a past event that already turned out well.
Por suerte is an adverbial phrase commenting on the whole sentence, like “luckily” or “fortunately” in English. It’s very common to place such phrases at the beginning for emphasis:
- Por suerte, encontramos un atajo y evitamos el atasco.
You can move it:
- Encontramos un atajo y, por suerte, evitamos el atasco.
- Encontramos un atajo y evitamos el atasco, por suerte.
All are grammatically correct. Differences are small:
- At the beginning: sets the tone; emphasizes that the whole situation turned out well.
- In the middle: slightly emphasizes the second action (evitamos el atasco) as the lucky part.
- At the end: sounds a bit more “afterthought” or comment-like.
In everyday speech, the sentence-initial Por suerte, … is probably the most natural here.
Encontramos can be either:
- Present: we find
- Preterite (past simple): we found
The form is the same for nosotros in both tenses, so only context tells you which one it is.
In this sentence, it is clearly past because we’re narrating a completed event (we found a shortcut, we avoided the jam). Both verbs are in the preterite:
- encontramos (we found)
- evitamos (we avoided)
If you needed to be explicit in isolation, you could add a time expression:
- Ayer, por suerte, encontramos un atajo y evitamos el atasco.
Yesterday, luckily, we found a shortcut and avoided the traffic jam.
The imperfect would be encontrábamos, which would mean “we used to find / we were finding,” and wouldn’t fit this specific, one-time action.
Yes, but it changes the nuance slightly, especially in Spain.
- Por suerte, encontramos un atajo…
- Preterite: a completed event, seen as a finished past story.
- Por suerte, hemos encontrado un atajo…
- Present perfect: a recent past event with more connection to the present moment.
In Spain, the present perfect (hemos encontrado) is often used for actions that happened very recently or within “today” and still feel relevant now.
Example nuance:
- Por suerte, hemos encontrado un atajo y ya estamos en casa.
Luckily, we’ve found a shortcut and we’re already home. (very recent, present result) - Por suerte, encontramos un atajo y evitamos el atasco.
Luckily, we found a shortcut and avoided the jam. (narrating a past incident)
Both are correct; which one you choose depends on how “connected to now” you want the action to feel.
Atajo is a masculine noun, so it takes un / el:
- un atajo = a shortcut
- el atajo = the shortcut
You just have to memorize the gender; there’s no visible marker like -o that guarantees masculinity, but many nouns ending in -o are masculine, and atajo follows that pattern.
Meaning of atajo:
- Literal: a shortcut, usually a shorter path than the normal route.
- Tomamos un atajo por un camino de tierra.
We took a shortcut along a dirt road.
- Tomamos un atajo por un camino de tierra.
- Figurative: a shortcut in the sense of avoiding steps.
- No hay atajos para aprender un idioma.
There are no shortcuts to learning a language.
- No hay atajos para aprender un idioma.
So here, un atajo is the usual way to say “a shortcut” (on the road, on foot, etc.).
The difference is about specificity, similar to “the jam” vs “a jam”:
- evitamos el atasco
- the traffic jam: a specific jam both speaker and listener have in mind (e.g., the one on the motorway you were going to get stuck in).
- evitamos un atasco
- a traffic jam: some traffic jam, not necessarily a concrete one already shared in the context.
In your sentence:
- …evitamos el atasco.
implies you both know which jam you’re talking about (for example, the usual morning jam, or the jam on that specific road).
Both are grammatically correct; choice of un vs el depends on whether the jam is specific in the context.
Atasco literally means a blockage / clog, and in traffic it means a traffic jam.
In Spain, common words for “traffic jam” include:
- un atasco – very common, standard
- un embotellamiento – also common; a bit more formal/technical
- una caravana – often used for slow, very dense traffic (a long line of cars)
Example:
- Había un atasco enorme en la autopista.
There was a huge traffic jam on the motorway.
Atasco is also used outside traffic:
- un atasco en el fregadero – a blockage in the sink
- un atasco en la impresora – a paper jam in the printer
But in the context of your sentence, it clearly refers to traffic.
In Spanish, you normally need an article (or another determiner) with singular countable nouns. So:
- ✅ evitamos el atasco
- ✅ evitamos un atasco
- ❌ evitamos atasco (not natural in normal sentences)
Dropping the article like evitamos atasco is only seen in special contexts like headlines or very telegraphic styles, for example:
- Obras en la M-30: medidas para evitar atasco. (headline style)
In normal speech or writing, you should use el or un (or another determiner like este atasco, ese atasco, etc.).
Yes, that’s perfectly correct and slightly more explicit.
- …encontramos un atajo y evitamos el atasco.
Just links the two actions with y (“and”). The cause–effect relationship is clear from context. - …encontramos un atajo y así evitamos el atasco.
Adds así (“like that / in that way”), making the cause–effect more explicit:- we found a shortcut and, *that way, we avoided the jam.*
Other similar options:
- …encontramos un atajo y gracias a eso evitamos el atasco.
…we found a shortcut and thanks to that we avoided the jam.
Your original sentence is already natural and clear; adding así just emphasizes that the shortcut is the means by which you avoided the jam.
Yes, a few key points:
1. Syllable stress
- Por SUER-te, en-CON-tra-mos un a-TA-jo y e-vi-TA-mos el a-TAS-co.
Stressed syllables: SUER, CON, TA (atajo), TA (evitamos), TAS (atasco).
2. The Spanish r*
- In por and suerte, the r is a single tap [ɾ], not like English “r”:
- Tap the tongue quickly against the ridge behind your teeth.
3. j sound in atajo
- atajo: j is a harsh sound, like the ch in German Bach or Scottish loch.
- a-TA-xo (approx.).
4. Vowels are pure
- All vowels (a, e, i, o, u) are short and clean, never reduced to a schwa:
- por ≈ por (not “per”)
- suerte ≈ SWER-te (not “SWUR-tuh”)
5. Linking words naturally
- Try to link final consonants to the next word:
- por_suerte, encontramos_un_atajo, y_evitamos_el_atasco
Practising slowly with these points will make your pronunciation sound much more natural in Spanish from Spain.