Breakdown of El estudiante estaba leyendo la tesis, pero yo haría otra cosa.
yo
I
el estudiante
student
pero
but
leer
to read
estar
to be (location/state)
hacer
to do / to make
otro
other
la cosa
thing
la tesis
the thesis
Questions & Answers about El estudiante estaba leyendo la tesis, pero yo haría otra cosa.
Why is it haría and not "hacería"?
Haría is the conditional form of hacer (to do / to make). Normally, to form the conditional, you add endings like -ía directly to the full infinitive verb. However, hacer has an irregular stem in the conditional and future tenses: the letters -ce- disappear, leaving the stem har-. Adding the yo ending -ía gives us haría (I would do).
Could I just say leyó instead of estaba leyendo?
You could use the simple past leyó (he read), but estaba leyendo (he was reading) emphasizes that the action was ongoing in the past. It uses the imperfect tense of estar (estaba) plus the gerund leyendo (reading) to paint a background picture of what was happening at that moment.
Why is it la tesis? Doesn't tesis look plural?
Tesis is a feminine noun that naturally ends in -s even in its singular form, which is why it uses la. For words like this, the singular and plural forms are exactly the same. If we were talking about multiple theses, it would be las tesis.
Why is there no word for "a" or "an" before otra cosa?
In Spanish, the word otro (or otra) already means "another" or "other." You never put un or una in front of it. So "another thing" or "something else" is simply otra cosa, not "una otra cosa".
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