Word
De haber leído el albarán, habría notado el desperfecto.
Meaning
Had I read the delivery note, I would have noticed the minor defect.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of De haber leído el albarán, habría notado el desperfecto.
leer
to read
de
of
haber
to have
notar
to notice
Questions & Answers about De haber leído el albarán, habría notado el desperfecto.
What does de haber leído mean here?
In this sentence, de haber leído means if he/she had read.
It is a compact, somewhat formal way of expressing a past unreal condition. The fuller version would be:
Si hubiera leído el albarán, habría notado el desperfecto.
So:
- de haber leído = if having read / had they read
- natural English translation = if he/she had read
Why is de used here? I thought conditional sentences normally used si.
They usually do. The most common way to say this is with si:
- Si hubiera leído el albarán, habría notado el desperfecto.
But Spanish also has a more literary, formal, or concise structure:
- De + infinitive / de + haber + past participle
So:
- De haber leído... = If he/she had read...
- De saberlo... = If I had known that...
This de structure is less common in everyday conversation than si, but it is perfectly correct and often found in writing or more formal speech.
Why is it haber leído and not just leer?