Learn Spanish (Latin America): Nos devoramos cada bocado porque tuvimos un hambre voraz. - We devoured every bite because we had a voracious hunger.

Nos devoramos cada bocado porque tuvimos un hambre voraz.

We devoured every bite because we had a voracious hunger.

Breakdown of Nos devoramos cada bocado porque tuvimos un hambre voraz.

Questions & Answers about Nos devoramos cada bocado porque tuvimos un hambre voraz.

Why is nos used before devoramos? Doesn't the verb ending already tell us who is eating?

This is called the affective dative or dative of interest. While devoramos alone means 'we devoured', adding nos emphasizes the completeness of the action and the eaters' emotional involvement. It gives a feeling similar to 'we gobbled it all up' in English, showing that absolutely nothing was left behind.

I thought physical feelings like hunger usually use the imperfect tense. Why does this sentence use the preterite tuvimos instead of teníamos?

You are right that background states usually take the imperfect (teníamos). However, using the preterite (tuvimos) here shifts the focus. It frames the hunger as a specific, bounded event directly tied to that single meal, emphasizing the sudden, intense reality of that hunger at the exact moment they sat down to eat.

Why is the masculine article un used in un hambre if the noun hambre is feminine?

Even though hambre is feminine, it starts with a stressed 'a' sound. To avoid the awkward double 'a' sound of una hambre, Spanish uses un (and el) directly before it. The word remains feminine, which is why other modifiers still need to match the feminine gender, like in mucha hambre.

Is bocado related to the word boca (mouth)?