Questions & Answers about ¿Ya ha funcionado el tratamiento?
Why is ya at the beginning of the sentence when 'already' is at the end in English?
In Spanish, adverbs like ya (already) are very flexible, but they most commonly go right before the verb (ha funcionado). Remember that you can never put a word between the two parts of the pretérito perfecto (ha and funcionado), so placing ya at the very beginning is the most natural choice here. Why use funcionado instead of trabajado for 'worked'?
Spanish has two different verbs for 'to work'. You use trabajar for a person doing physical or mental labor (a job). You use funcionar when talking about something functioning or being effective, like a machine, a plan, or in this case, a medical treatment (el tratamiento). Why is the subject el tratamiento at the very end of the question?
In Spanish questions, it is perfectly normal to invert the word order and put the subject after the verb (ha funcionado). You could also say ¿El tratamiento ya ha funcionado?, but putting el tratamiento at the end sounds very natural to native speakers. Why do we use the pretérito perfecto (ha funcionado) here?
The pretérito perfecto is used to talk about past actions that connect to the present moment. Since we are using ya to ask if the treatment has taken effect up to right now, we use ha (it has) and the past participle funcionado (worked). Learn ¿Ya ha funcionado el tratamiento and more in Spanish
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free