Breakdown of Si un meteoro atraviesa el cielo, te lo muestro.
un
a, an (masculine)
te
to you / you (direct object)
lo
it / him (direct object)
el cielo
sky
mostrar
to show
si
if
el meteoro
the meteor
atravesar
to cross (through) / to go through
Questions & Answers about Si un meteoro atraviesa el cielo, te lo muestro.
Why is atraviesa in the present indicative, rather than the subjunctive?
When you use si (if) to introduce a realistic condition, you always use the present indicative—even if the event hasn't happened yet. While it might feel uncertain whether the meteor will actually appear, Spanish reserves the subjunctive in si clauses only for impossible or highly unlikely hypothetical scenarios (like "If I were a meteor...").
Why does the Spanish use the present tense muestro when the English translation says "I will show"?
In Spanish, the present tense is frequently used to talk about the future, especially when the action feels immediate, certain, or is a direct promise. You could technically use the future tense and say te lo mostraré (I will show it to you), but te lo muestro makes the promise sound like a guaranteed, immediate reaction.
Let's review the pronoun order. Why is it te lo muestro and not the other way around?
When a sentence has both an indirect object pronoun (who receives the action) and a direct object pronoun (the thing itself), the indirect object always comes first. Here, te (to you) comes before lo (it, the meteor). Think "people before things" to remember the order!
What is the infinitive of atraviesa, and is it a stem-changing verb?
The infinitive is atravesar (to cross, to go through). It is an "e to ie" stem-changing verb, which is why the "e" becomes "ie" in atraviesa for the "it" form (the meteor).
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