Word
El terrateniente cuya familia construyó el claustro perdió su dinero.
Meaning
The landowner whose family built the cloister lost his money.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of El terrateniente cuya familia construyó el claustro perdió su dinero.
la familia
the family
su
his/her/its/their/your (formal)
el dinero
money
perder
to lose
Questions & Answers about El terrateniente cuya familia construyó el claustro perdió su dinero.
Why is it cuya (feminine) if the landowner (el terrateniente) is masculine?
Is cuya commonly used in everyday spoken Spanish?
It is standard in written, formal, or journalistic Spanish, but native speakers often avoid it in casual conversation because it sounds very formal. In everyday speech, someone might rephrase this idea entirely, such as splitting it into two sentences or saying something like El terrateniente que tiene la familia que construyó el claustro...
Building a cloister takes a long time. Why is construyó in the preterite instead of the imperfect?
The preterite construyó is used because the building of the cloister is viewed as a single, completed event in the past. Even if an action took years to finish, if you are simply stating it as a completed historical fact, you use the preterite. The imperfect (construía) would translate more accurately to "were building" or "used to build."
How is the word terrateniente formed?