Breakdown of Yo veía al mensajero discretamente sin hacer ruido.
yo
I
ver
to see / to look / appear
hacer
to do / to make
el ruido
the noise
sin
without
el mensajero
messenger
discretamente
discreetly
a
personal 'a' (marks a human direct object)
Questions & Answers about Yo veía al mensajero discretamente sin hacer ruido.
Why does this sentence use sin hacer (infinitive) instead of sin que?
In Spanish, when the person doing the main action is the exact same person doing the second action, you just use sin followed by the infinitive (hacer). Since 'I' am the one watching and 'I' am also the one not making noise, we don't need sin que. If someone else were making the noise, you would use sin que plus the subjunctive.
I always want to translate 'without making' as sin haciendo. Why is it sin hacer?
In English, we use prepositions with an '-ing' word, like 'without making'. But in Spanish, after a preposition like sin (without), you must always use the full infinitive verb (ending in -ar, -er, or -ir). So 'without making' is always sin hacer.
Why use the imperfect tense veía here instead of the preterite vi?
Why is it al mensajero instead of just el mensajero?
This is the 'personal a' in action. Whenever the direct object of a verb is a specific person, you must put the preposition a right before it. Here, a combines with the masculine article el to form the mandatory contraction al.
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