Word
Llevo dos horas esperando al repartidor, pero voy a comer tan pronto como llegue.
Meaning
I have been waiting two hours for the delivery person, but I am going to eat as soon as he arrives.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Llevo dos horas esperando al repartidor, pero voy a comer tan pronto como llegue.
pero
but
comer
to eat
ir
to go
a
to
Questions & Answers about Llevo dos horas esperando al repartidor, pero voy a comer tan pronto como llegue.
Why is llegue in the subjunctive here instead of the indicative llega?
The phrase tan pronto como (as soon as) introduces an event that hasn't happened yet. When temporal phrases like this refer to a future, anticipated action, they require the subjunctive. If the sentence were instead describing a habitual routine (like, I eat as soon as he arrives every Tuesday), you would use the indicative llega.
Could I use en cuanto or apenas in this sentence?
Yes, absolutely. You could say en cuanto llegue or apenas llegue. They mean exactly the same thing as tan pronto como llegue and function the exact same way grammatically, requiring the present subjunctive when talking about an immediate future event.
Why does the sentence use llevo dos horas esperando to mean I have been waiting two hours?
To express how long you have been continuously doing something, Spanish commonly uses the formula llevar + [amount of time] + [gerund]. While you could literally translate the English structure and say he estado esperando dos horas, using llevar is highly idiomatic, natural, and very common in everyday Spanish.
Why does it say al repartidor instead of el repartidor? Doesn't esperar already mean to wait for?