Breakdown of A veces se añora la vitalidad que se tenía a los veinte años.
tener
to have
los
the (masculine plural)
el año
year
a
to
que
that / than
veinte
twenty
la
the (feminine)
a veces
sometimes
se
(impersonal) one / passive marker
añorar
to long for (with nostalgia)
la vitalidad
vitality
Questions & Answers about A veces se añora la vitalidad que se tenía a los veinte años.
How could I rewrite this sentence to express a first-person unfulfillable wish using ¡quién! like we're learning in this lesson?
To express this as an unfulfillable wish about yourself, you could say ¡Quién tuviera la vitalidad de los veinte años! (If only I had the vitality of a twenty-year-old!). You use quién followed by the imperfect subjunctive (tuviera) to show a deep desire for something in the present that is impossible to achieve.
Why does this sentence use se añora and se tenía instead of just using a normal subject like 'we' or 'people'?
This uses the impersonal se to make a universal statement. While you could say añoramos (we long for) or la gente añora (people long for), using se añora (one longs for) and se tenía (one had) creates a philosophical, detached tone that is very common in Spanish when stating general truths about the human experience.
I usually use extrañar for 'to miss.' Why does this sentence use añorar?
Añorar implies a deeper, more profound nostalgia or longing than extrañar. While you would use extrañar for a friend who is out of town, añorar is the perfect word here because it describes a melancholic yearning for a past time, state of being, or distant homeland.
Why is there a los in a los veinte años?
When expressing the age at which something happens or happened, Spanish uses the definite article los because you are referring to that specific period of life (literally 'at the twenty years'). In everyday speech, it's very common to drop años and just say a los veinte.
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