Word
En cuanto la propietaria averigüe el problema, llamará a la albañil otra vez.
Meaning
As soon as the owner finds out the problem, she will call the builder again.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of En cuanto la propietaria averigüe el problema, llamará a la albañil otra vez.
a
to
ella
she
en cuanto
as soon as
.
period (punctuation mark)
Questions & Answers about En cuanto la propietaria averigüe el problema, llamará a la albañil otra vez.
Why is averigüe in the subjunctive instead of averigua?
Because en cuanto means as soon as, and when it refers to a future action in Spanish, the verb in that time clause normally goes in the present subjunctive.
So Spanish sees this as:
- When/As soon as she finds out the problem → future, not completed yet
That is why you get:
Compare:
- En cuanto averigüe el problema, llamará... = As soon as she finds out the problem, she will call...
- En cuanto averigua el problema, llama... sounds wrong here for standard Spanish because it is not talking about a habitual or already-real situation.
What exactly does en cuanto mean here?
Here it means as soon as.
It introduces a time clause:
It can also sometimes mean as for in other contexts, but not here. In this sentence, it is clearly temporal.
Similar expressions are:
- tan pronto como
- apenas (in some contexts)
- cuando sometimes, but en cuanto strongly emphasizes immediacy: the moment that / as soon as
Why is there a ü in averigüe?