Breakdown of Nuestra salud mejoró gracias a la inspección.
nuestro
our
a
to
mejorar
to improve
la salud
the health
la inspección
the inspection
gracias a
thanks to
Questions & Answers about Nuestra salud mejoró gracias a la inspección.
Why do we use gracias a here instead of gracias a que?
You use gracias a when it is followed by a noun or noun phrase, which in this case is la inspección. You would only use gracias a que if you were following it with a conjugated verb clause, such as gracias a que nos inspeccionaron (thanks to the fact that they inspected us).
Could I use por culpa de or a causa de instead of gracias a in this sentence?
gracias a is specifically used for positive outcomes, which fits perfectly here since health improving is a good thing. por culpa de implies blame for a negative outcome, so it would sound very strange. a causa de and debido a are neutral and could be used grammatically, but gracias a is much more natural when you want to highlight the positive result.
Why is the verb mejorar not reflexive (se mejoró) here? I often hear people use the reflexive when recovering from an illness.
When referring to a person recovering from an illness, it is very common to use the pronominal/reflexive form (e.g., él se mejoró). However, when the subject is an inanimate concept or a general state like nuestra salud (our health) or la situación (the situation), the standard non-reflexive mejoró is preferred.
Why did we use the preterite mejoró instead of the imperfect mejoraba?
Using the preterite mejoró treats the improvement as a completed, definitive change that was triggered by the inspection. If you used the imperfect mejoraba, it would set a background scene, meaning our health was in an ongoing, continuous process of improving over time, rather than a stated result.
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