Breakdown of Hay que evacuar apenas lleguen los bomberos.
los
the (masculine plural)
llegar
to arrive
hay que
(with que) one has to / must
apenas
barely
evacuar
to evacuate
el bombero
firefighter
Questions & Answers about Hay que evacuar apenas lleguen los bomberos.
Why is lleguen in the subjunctive here instead of the indicative llegan?
The word apenas means "as soon as". Because this sentence refers to a future event that hasn't happened yet (the firefighters haven't arrived), you must use the subjunctive (lleguen). If it were a routine action, like "we evacuate every time they arrive", you would use the indicative (llegan).
Why use hay que instead of tenemos que if the translation says "We must"?
The phrase hay que is an impersonal way to say "one must" or "it is necessary to". Even though it doesn't strictly mean "we", English translations often use "we must" or "people must" to capture this general sense of obligation. You could say tenemos que evacuar to specifically say "we have to", but hay que sounds very natural for a general emergency instruction like this.
Why does the subject los bomberos come after the verb lleguen?
In Spanish, it is very common to invert the subject and the verb in dependent clauses, especially with verbs related to arriving, leaving, or appearing. While apenas los bomberos lleguen is grammatically correct, apenas lleguen los bomberos flows much better and sounds more natural to a native speaker.
Why is there a 'u' in the spelling of lleguen?
The infinitive llegar has a hard 'g' sound. To keep that exact same sound when adding the 'e' ending for the present subjunctive, you have to insert a 'u' (-gue-). If you just wrote llegen, the 'g' before the 'e' would make a soft sound, similar to an English 'h'.
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