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Lo que importa es la pureza, ya sea de un zafiro o de un diamante.

Lo que importa es la pureza, ya sea de un zafiro o de un diamante.
What matters is the purity, whether of a sapphire or a diamond.
From Lesson 387:Alternative options (ya sea... o...)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Lo que importa es la pureza, ya sea de un zafiro o de un diamante.

How does "ya sea... o..." work, and why does it use the subjunctive "sea"?
Ya sea... o... translates to "whether... or..." and introduces alternatives. It uses sea, the present subjunctive of ser, because it sets up hypothetical or non-specific options. You can think of it as literally meaning "whether it be...".
Could I use the alternative "bien... bien..." in this sentence?
Yes, you could say bien de un zafiro, bien de un diamante. Both structures work for distributive coordination, but ya sea... o... is much more common in everyday Latin American Spanish. Bien... bien... tends to sound more formal or literary.
Why is the preposition "de" repeated before "un diamante"?
In Spanish, when linking alternatives with structures like ya sea... o..., it is grammatically standard to repeat the preposition for each item (de un zafiro o de un diamante). This keeps the sentence balanced and precise.
Quick refresher: Why use "Lo que" at the beginning instead of just "Qué"?
Lo que means "that which" or "the thing that" and functions as the subject of the statement. If you used Qué with an accent, it would turn the phrase into a direct question, as in "¿Qué importa?" (What matters?).

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