Learn Spanish (Latin America): ¿Tuviste problemas con tu aerolínea?

¿Tuviste problemas con tu aerolínea?

Did you have problems with your airline?

Breakdown of ¿Tuviste problemas con tu aerolínea?

Questions & Answers about ¿Tuviste problemas con tu aerolínea?

Why is the word for 'you had' tuviste instead of something like 'teniste'?

Tener (to have) is highly irregular in the preterite (completed past) tense. It changes its stem to tuv- and uses a special set of endings. For the tú (you informal) form, that makes it tuviste.

I noticed problemas ends in '-as'. Is it a feminine word?

No, it is actually masculine (el problema or los problemas). Many Spanish words that end in -ma (like el sistema or el idioma) are masculine because they originally came from the Greek language. This is a common exception to the rule that words ending in '-a' are feminine.

Why is there no accent mark on tu?

Tu without an accent mark is the possessive adjective 'your' (as in tu aerolínea, your airline). If it had an accent mark (tú), it would mean the subject pronoun 'you'.

Why does aerolínea have an accent mark on the í?

The accent mark tells you exactly where to put the spoken stress. Without it, the natural rules of Spanish pronunciation would put the stress on a different syllable. The accent ensures you pronounce it with the emphasis on that specific letter.