Learn Spanish (Latin America): Con la beca, tú podrías pagar la maestría. - With the scholarship, you could pay for the master's degree.

Con la beca, tú podrías pagar la maestría.

With the scholarship, you could pay for the master's degree.

Breakdown of Con la beca, tú podrías pagar la maestría.

tú

you (informal singular)

Questions & Answers about Con la beca, tú podrías pagar la maestría.

Why is the verb podrías instead of poderías?

This is the conditional tense of poder (to be able to). The verb poder has an irregular stem in the conditional. Instead of adding the ending to the full infinitive, you drop the 'e' to get the stem podr-, and then add the tú ending -ías. This gives us podrías, meaning 'you could' or 'you would be able to'.

In English we say 'pay for' the master's degree. Why isn't there a word for 'for' before la maestría?

In Spanish, the verb pagar directly takes the item you are buying as its object. You do not need to add a translation for 'for'. Saying pagar por la maestría is unnecessary and can sound unnatural when simply stating what you are buying.

Why is the pronoun tú included if the verb ending already shows who is doing the action?

You are right that the -ías ending on podrías makes tú grammatically optional. Including it here just adds a little extra emphasis to the subject, similar to stressing the word 'you' in English: 'with the scholarship, you could pay for the master's degree'.

Is maestría the standard word for a master's degree?