Questions & Answers about Sin ti, el brindis sería un fracaso.
Why does "sería" translate to "was probably" here instead of "would be"?
This is the main focus of your current lesson! In Spanish, you can use the conditional tense to express a guess or probability about the past. While sería normally means "would be", in this context it translates better to "was probably" or "must have been".
Why does the singular word "el brindis" end in an "s"?
Brindis (meaning a celebratory toast) is a noun that naturally ends in -s in its singular form. When a noun ends in -s and has an unstressed final syllable, its spelling stays exactly the same in the plural. You just change the article, making it los brindis (the toasts).
Why do we use "ti" instead of "tú" in "sin ti"?
Whenever you use a preposition like sin (without), para (for), or de (of), you have to follow it with a prepositional object pronoun. For the informal "you", the subject pronoun tú changes to the prepositional pronoun ti.
Is "fracaso" related to the English word "fraction"?
Not at all! Fracaso is a false friend. It actually means "failure" or "disaster". If you want to say "fraction" in Spanish, you would use the word fracción.