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¿Dónde encontraste la madera podrida?

¿Dónde encontraste la madera podrida?
Where did you find the rotten wood?
From Lesson 243:Past duration (hacía... que)·Spanish (Latin America)

Breakdown of ¿Dónde encontraste la madera podrida?

dónde
where
encontrar
to find
la madera
the wood
podrido
rotten

Questions & Answers about ¿Dónde encontraste la madera podrida?

Why use the preterite encontraste instead of the imperfect encontrabas?
Because finding the wood was a single, completed event in the past, which is exactly what the preterite tense is for. You would generally only use the imperfect (encontrabas) if you were setting a background scene or talking about a repeated habit of finding wood.
Is the adjective podrida related to a verb?
Yes, podrida is the past participle of the verb pudrir (to rot). Like many past participles in Spanish, it functions as an adjective here. Because it describes la madera, it must end in -a to match its feminine, singular gender.
Does la madera also mean "wood" as in a forest?
No, la madera strictly refers to the physical material (lumber or timber). To talk about a forest or "the woods", you would use the word el bosque.
Why does Dónde have an accent mark?
All question words in Spanish require a written accent mark. This distinguishes the question word dónde (where?) from the relative pronoun donde (where), which is used to connect ideas, like in the phrase 'the place where I live'.

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