Breakdown of Mi amiga y yo hablamos por videollamada y ella me contó que en su voluntariado conoció a muchas personas mayores.
Questions & Answers about Mi amiga y yo hablamos por videollamada y ella me contó que en su voluntariado conoció a muchas personas mayores.
The form hablamos is the same for:
- present: nosotros hablamos = we talk / we are talking
- preterite (simple past): nosotros hablamos = we talked
So you rely on context.
In this sentence, the second verb is ella me contó (she told me), clearly in the past, so it’s natural to interpret hablamos as past too:
- Mi amiga y yo hablamos por videollamada y ella me contó…
→ My friend and I talked by video call and she told me…
If you really wanted to make it explicit, you could say:
- Ayer mi amiga y yo hablamos por videollamada… (Yesterday my friend and I talked…)
In Spain, the pretérito perfecto (present perfect) is indeed very common for recent, still-connected-to-now events:
- Mi amiga y yo hemos hablado por videollamada y ella me ha contado que…
(My friend and I have talked by video call and she has told me that…)
Both versions are correct:
- Hablamos / me contó → simple past (a bit more “completed, finished”).
- Hemos hablado / me ha contado → present perfect (recent, often feels more “linked” to the present).
In everyday Peninsular Spanish, if this happened earlier today or very recently, hemos hablado / me ha contado would be extremely common. The version with hablamos / contó is also fine; it just feels a touch more neutral or narrative-past.
Both are correct, but they’re used slightly differently:
Mi amiga y yo hablamos por videollamada…
Emphasises who the two people are (my friend + me). This is very natural when introducing the participants for the first time.Nosotras hablamos por videollamada…
Uses the pronoun nosotras, which assumes the listener already knows who “we” are (a group of all females in this case).
You might also combine both, for clarity or emphasis:
- Mi amiga y yo, nosotras hablamos por videollamada…
But in normal speech you’d just say Mi amiga y yo hablamos… as in the sentence.
You could say:
- Mi amiga y yo hablamos por videollamada y me contó que…
Spanish often drops subject pronouns because the verb ending usually makes it clear who the subject is.
However, here the subject changes:
- First clause: Mi amiga y yo hablamos… → subject = my friend and I (plural)
- Second clause: ella me contó… → subject = she (singular), object = me
Adding ella makes that change very clear:
- It highlights that she (your friend) is the one who told you something.
- Without ella, context still suggests it’s your friend, but the explicit pronoun is very natural and clear.
So y ella me contó is perfectly good, slightly clearer than y me contó.
Por is the usual preposition for the means or channel of communication:
- hablar por teléfono – to talk on the phone
- hablar por WhatsApp – to talk on WhatsApp
- reunirse por videollamada – to meet by video call
So hablamos por videollamada is the most natural.
Other possibilities:
- Hablamos en una videollamada – possible, but less common; it sounds a bit more like “in a video-call setting”.
- Hablamos por videollamada / por Zoom / por videoconferencia – all common.
- Hicimos una videollamada – “we made a video call” / “we had a video call” (see another question below).
For everyday Spanish from Spain, por videollamada is exactly what you’d expect.
Both verbs are possible, but they aren’t identical:
- decir = to say / to tell (very general)
- contar = literally to count, but very often to tell (a story, anecdote, experience in some detail)
In your sentence:
- ella me contó que en su voluntariado conoció a muchas personas mayores
Suggests she related or recounted an experience; it can imply a more narrative or detailed telling.
If you say:
- ella me dijo que en su voluntariado conoció a muchas personas mayores
That focuses more on the information she gave you, without the nuance of “telling a story”.
Both are correct; contar just adds a slight sense of “she told me about it / told me the story of how she met them”.
Yes. The typical pattern is:
- contar algo a alguien = to tell something to someone
So in Spanish you usually use an indirect object pronoun:
- Ella me contó algo. – She told me something.
- Ella te contó algo. – She told you something.
- Ella nos contó algo. – She told us something.
In your sentence:
- Ella me contó que…
→ me = to me (indirect object)
→ que en su voluntariado conoció… = what she told you (the “story” / information).
Voluntariado (in Spain) often means:
- the period or project of volunteering
- a specific volunteer program or placement
So:
- en su voluntariado ≈ during her volunteering placement / during her volunteer work.
You could also say:
- durante su voluntariado conoció a muchas personas mayores – perfectly correct; emphasizes the time frame (“during”).
- haciendo (un) voluntariado conoció a… – “while doing volunteer work she met…”
En su voluntariado is quite idiomatic: it treats voluntariado almost like a “sphere” or “context” (in her volunteering experience).
This is the classic preterite vs imperfect contrast:
- conocer (preterite, conoció) = met (for the first time, at a specific point)
- conocer (imperfect, conocía) = knew / was acquainted with (ongoing state)
So:
- conoció a muchas personas mayores
→ She met many older people (during that volunteering period, as a series of “first meetings”).
If you said:
- conocía a muchas personas mayores
it would normally be understood as “she knew many older people” (she was acquainted with them), not that she first met them there.
Because we’re telling a story of what happened during the volunteering experience, the preterite conoció (met) is the natural choice.
Yes, that a is the personal a, used when the direct object is a person or people (or sometimes pets) and is specific or “person-like” enough.
Here:
- conoció a muchas personas mayores
→ a marks muchas personas mayores as people.
With conocer, when the object is human, a is very typical:
- Conocí a mucha gente allí. – I met many people there.
- Conoció a sus vecinos. – He/She met his/her neighbours.
There are cases where Spanish may omit a with very generic, indefinite humans (e.g., buscamos empleados), but with conocer a mucha gente / a muchas personas the a is the norm and sounds natural.
Personas mayores literally means “older people”, but in usage it corresponds to polite “elderly people / senior citizens”.
Nuances:
- personas mayores – neutral, respectful, very common in Spain in everyday speech and in official contexts.
- ancianos – can be neutral but often sounds more formal or institutional (used in residencia de ancianos, “care home”); in casual speech it may feel a bit “old-fashioned” or too strong.
- viejos – literally “old”, but when used for people it can easily sound rude or dismissive (old folks, old geezers). You’d only use it affectionately in very specific contexts and relationships.
So in your sentence, personas mayores is the natural, polite way to talk about elderly people in current Peninsular Spanish.
Yes, both are correct, but they focus on slightly different things:
Mi amiga y yo hablamos por videollamada.
Emphasises the action of talking and the medium (we talked, and it was by video call).Mi amiga y yo hicimos una videollamada.
Emphasises the event of having / making a video call. It doesn’t underline the talking as much as the fact that the video call took place.
In everyday speech, both are natural. If you specifically care about the conversation itself, hablamos por videollamada is ideal; if you care about the activity (“we had a video call”), hicimos una videollamada works well.