Breakdown of Podemos esperar aquí con ella.
ella
she
aquí
here
con
with
poder
to be able to / can
esperar
to wait / to hope / to expect
Questions & Answers about Podemos esperar aquí con ella.
Why is esperar left in its infinitive (dictionary) form instead of being conjugated?
When you use poder (can / to be able to) to say what someone can do, only poder gets conjugated to match the subject. The action verb that follows—in this case, esperar (to wait)—stays in its basic infinitive form. This is just like English: we say "We can wait", not "We can we wait".
I learned that poder changes to pued- (like puedo or puedes). Why doesn't it change in podemos?
Poder is a stem-changing verb where the o changes to ue, but there is an important exception for A1 learners to remember: the nosotros / nosotras (we) forms never use the stem change in the present tense. So it is puedo (I can), but always podemos (we can).
Doesn't esperar mean "to hope"? How do I know it means "to wait" here?
Esperar is a very useful multi-purpose verb! It means "to wait", "to hope", and "to expect". You can tell which meaning to use from the context of the sentence. Since they are talking about staying in a location (aquí, meaning "here") alongside someone (con ella), "to wait" is the only translation that makes sense.
Why do we use ella for "her" here? Isn't ella the word for "she"?
Yes, ella is the subject pronoun for "she". However, after a preposition like con (with), you must use a prepositional pronoun. For the third person (he/she/it/them), prepositional pronouns are exactly the same as the subject pronouns. Therefore, con ella means "with her".
Where is the word for "we" (nosotros) in this sentence?
In Spanish, you can usually drop the subject pronouns (like yo, tú, or nosotros) because the verb ending already tells you who is doing the action. The -emos ending on podemos can only mean "we", so adding nosotros at the beginning isn't necessary unless you want to add special emphasis.
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