Learn Spanish (Latin America): Hacía mucho frío y se me cayó la cerámica. - It was very cold and I dropped the pottery.

In Spanish, when something happens by accident, we often use the structure se + indirect object pronoun (me, te, le, etc.) + verb. Instead of saying 'I dropped it' (which sounds like you did it on purpose), this structure literally translates to 'the pottery fell to me.' It shifts the blame away from you!

Why is the verb cayó used here instead of a first-person form like caí?

Because in the accidental se construction, the object that drops or breaks is the actual grammatical subject. Here, la cerámica is doing the falling, so the verb caer must be conjugated in the third-person singular (cayó) to match it. If you dropped multiple pieces of pottery, it would be se me cayeron las cerámicas.

Why use hacía instead of hizo for 'it was'?

We use the imperfect tense (hacía) here because it is setting the scene or providing background information. You are describing how the weather was at that time, rather than a completed action that interrupted or moved the story forward.

Why do we use hacía (from hacer, to make/do) instead of a form of ser or estar for the weather?