Breakdown of El artesano viejo está cosiendo desde hace cuatro horas.
viejo
old
estar
to be (location/state)
la hora
hour
cuatro
four
hace
ago
desde
since / from (a starting point)
el artesano
the artisan
coser
to sew
Questions & Answers about El artesano viejo está cosiendo desde hace cuatro horas.
Why does the Spanish sentence use está cosiendo (is sewing) when the English translation says "has been sewing"?
In Spanish, when an action started in the past and is still happening right now, we use the present tense or the present continuous (estar + the -ndo form). Because the artisan is still sewing, we say está cosiendo along with desde hace. English uses "has been doing", but translating that literally to Spanish often sounds unnatural.
Why do we need both desde and hace to say "for four hours"?
What is the infinitive (base form) of cosiendo?
Why is it artesano viejo instead of viejo artesano?
In Spanish, descriptive adjectives like viejo (old) usually come after the noun they describe to give an objective fact about it. Putting it before the noun (viejo artesano) is possible, but it changes the meaning slightly to sound more poetic or to mean "long-time artisan" rather than focusing on his actual physical age.
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