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Llevamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima, así que la videollamada del viernes nos hizo muy felices.

Llevamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima, así que la videollamada del viernes nos hizo muy felices.
We have gone months without seeing our cousin, so Friday’s video call made us very happy.
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Questions & Answers about Llevamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima, así que la videollamada del viernes nos hizo muy felices.

In llevamos meses sin ver…, what does llevamos mean here? It usually means we carry or we wear, right?

Yes, llevar normally means to carry, to wear, etc., but here it has a special time-related meaning.

In this structure, llevar + time expression + gerund / sin + infinitive means to have been doing / to have spent (time) doing or not doing something.

  • Llevamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima
    ≈ We’ve gone months without seeing our cousin / We haven’t seen our cousin for months.

So you can think of llevamos here as “we have spent (time)”, but grammatically it’s just llevar in the present tense being used in this idiomatic time expression.

How does llevamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima compare to hace meses que no vemos a nuestra prima?

They are very close in meaning:

  • Llevamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima.
  • Hace meses que no vemos a nuestra prima.

Both mean: We haven’t seen our cousin for months.

Subtle differences:

  • llevar + time + sin + infinitive often feels a bit more colloquial/natural in speech and focuses on the duration we’ve spent in that situation.
  • hace + time + que + no + verb is extremely common too and maybe slightly more neutral / textbooky.

In everyday Peninsular Spanish, both are perfectly normal. You can generally alternate them without changing the basic meaning.

Why is it sin ver a nuestra prima and not sin ver nuestra prima? What is the purpose of a?

In Spanish, when the direct object is a specific person (or a beloved animal), you normally use the “personal a” before it.

  • ver a nuestra prima = to see our cousin (specific person)
  • ver la casa = to see the house (thing → no a)

So:

  • sin ver a nuestra prima = without seeing our cousin
    If you said sin ver nuestra prima, it would sound incorrect or at least very odd to a native speaker.
Why is it nuestra prima and not nuestro prima?

Spanish possessive adjectives agree in gender and number with the thing possessed, not with the possessor.

  • prima is feminine singular → nuestra prima (our female cousin)
  • primo would be masculine singular → nuestro primo (our male cousin)

So:

  • nuestra casa (feminine, singular)
  • nuestro coche (masculine, singular)
  • nuestras casas (feminine, plural)
  • nuestros coches (masculine, plural)
What is the structure sin ver exactly? Why not a conjugated verb like sin vemos?

After sin, Spanish uses an infinitive, not a conjugated verb, when it acts like “without doing something”.

  • sin ver = without seeing
  • sin comer = without eating
  • sin decir nada = without saying anything

So:

  • Llevamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima.
    We’ve spent months without seeing our cousin.

Using sin vemos would be ungrammatical; sin cannot be followed by a finite verb like that.

Why is it la videollamada del viernes instead of el videollamada? How do we know the gender?

Videollamada is a feminine noun, so it takes la:

  • la videollamada = the video call

There’s no strict rule from the ending -ada itself, but many nouns ending in -ada are feminine (e.g. la llamada, la ensalada, la temporada).

So:

  • la llamada → feminine
  • la videollamada → also feminine
  • del viernes = on Friday’s / of Friday (here: the video call on Friday).
Why is it nos hizo muy felices and not nos hizo muy feliz?

Both are possible, but they focus slightly differently:

  • nos hizo muy felices
    Literally: made us very happy (plural)
    – felices agrees with nos (us), which is plural.

  • nos hizo muy feliz
    Literally: made us very happy (singular)
    – Here feliz is treated more like an uncountable state or a general “amount” of happiness; this is also heard, especially in speech.

Grammatically, nos hizo muy felices is the more strictly concordant version (adjective agreeing with the plural people), and it’s a bit more common in careful writing.

Why is the verb hizo (preterite) and not something like hacía (imperfect)?

The preterite (hizo) is used for completed actions seen as a whole, usually at a specific time.

  • la videollamada del viernes nos hizo muy felices
    = the video call on Friday made us very happy (one specific event, complete).

The imperfect (hacía) is used for ongoing, repeated, or background actions. Here we’re talking about a single video call that caused a result at a particular moment, so the preterite is the natural choice.

Using nos hacía muy felices would suggest something like “it used to make us very happy” (repeatedly over time), which doesn’t fit the context of a one-time call.

Could we say nos puso muy felices instead of nos hizo muy felices? What’s the difference?

Yes, you can say:

  • la videollamada del viernes nos puso muy felices

Differences:

  • hacer feliz a alguien / hacer a alguien feliz = to make someone happy (very common, neutral).
  • poner a alguien feliz / poner a alguien contento
    Also common; poner here is more like “to put (someone) into a state of…”.

In this sentence, both nos hizo muy felices and nos puso muy felices are natural. Hizo might sound slightly more neutral/formal; puso can feel a bit more colloquial/emotional in some contexts, but the difference is small.

What does así que mean here, and how is it different from por eso?

In this sentence:

  • así que ≈ so / therefore

Así que introduces a consequence:

  • Llevamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima, así que la videollamada del viernes nos hizo muy felices.
    We haven’t seen our cousin for months, so the video call on Friday made us very happy.

You could also say:

  • …, por eso la videollamada del viernes nos hizo muy felices.

Differences:

  • así que is very common in spoken, informal Spanish and feels very natural in narratives.
  • por eso is also common and perhaps a bit more explicitly causal (“for that reason”), and slightly more neutral.

In everyday Peninsular Spanish, both work well here.

Could we say Hemos pasado meses sin ver a nuestra prima instead of Llevamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima?

Yes, that’s possible:

  • Hemos pasado meses sin ver a nuestra prima.

It means essentially the same: We’ve spent months without seeing our cousin.

Nuances:

  • Llevamos meses sin ver…
    Very idiomatic, slightly more compact and common for this duration idea.
  • Hemos pasado meses sin ver…
    Also correct, but it highlights the experience of “spending” that time a bit more.

Both are fine in Spain; llevar + time is extremely common in this kind of sentence.

Is the llevar + time structure only used in the present, or can we use other tenses too?

You can use llevar + time expression + gerund / sin + infinitive in other tenses to place the duration in different points in time:

  • Present:
    Llevamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima.
    → We’ve been months without seeing her (up to now).

  • Imperfect (past background):
    Llevábamos meses sin ver a nuestra prima.
    → At that time, we had been months without seeing her.

  • Future:
    Llevaremos meses sin ver a nuestra prima cuando vuelva.
    → We will have spent months without seeing her by the time she comes back.

The pattern stays the same; only the tense of llevar changes to match the time frame.