Word
Querían comprar unos zapatos cotizados antes de que la gente abarrotara la calle.
Meaning
They wanted to buy some sought-after shoes before people packed the street.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Querían comprar unos zapatos cotizados antes de que la gente abarrotara la calle.
de
from / of
un
a, an (masculine)
comprar
to buy
el zapato
the shoe
Questions & Answers about Querían comprar unos zapatos cotizados antes de que la gente abarrotara la calle.
Why does this sentence use the imperfect subjunctive (abarrotara)?
The phrase antes de que always triggers the subjunctive. Because the main verb (querían) is in the past, we must backshift the timeframe of the second verb. We use the imperfect subjunctive (abarrotara) to show that the street packing was an anticipated, pending event from the perspective of the past.
Could we have just used antes de instead of antes de que?
No. You use antes de followed by an infinitive only when the subject of both verbs is the same. Because the first action's subject is 'they' (querían) and the second action's subject is 'the people' (la gente), you must use antes de que followed by a conjugated subjunctive verb.
I know cotizar means to quote a price. How does cotizados translate to sought-after?
Why is the verb abarrotara singular when it refers to a crowd of people?
In Spanish, the word for people (la gente) is a singular collective noun. Even though it refers to many individuals, it always takes a third-person singular verb conjugation. This is a common trap for English speakers, since the word people is plural in English.