Questions & Answers about Temía que el castigo no funcionara y él no obedeciera.
Why do we use funcionara and obedeciera instead of the normal past tense?
The English translation uses 'wouldn't work' and 'wouldn't obey.' Why don't we use the Spanish conditional tense?
Could I use the -se endings for the imperfect subjunctive here instead of -ra?
Yes, you could say funcionase and obedeciese. Both sets of endings are grammatically correct and mean exactly the same thing. However, the -ra endings used in this sentence are much more common in everyday spoken Latin American Spanish.
Why is the pronoun él included before no obedeciera?
The imperfect subjunctive form obedeciera can mean 'I', 'he', 'she', or 'it' did the action. Since the first verb (Temía) is in the 'I' form, leaving out él might make it sound like you feared that you yourself wouldn't obey. Adding él makes it completely clear who is doing the obeying.