Log inSign up

Anoche aparqué mal y pagué una multa de doscientos euros.

Anoche aparqué mal y pagué una multa de doscientos euros.
Last night I parked badly and paid a fine of two hundred euros.
From Lesson 132:Preterite spelling changes (-qué, -gué, -cé)·Spanish (Spain)

Questions & Answers about Anoche aparqué mal y pagué una multa de doscientos euros.

Why is it aparqué and not aparcé?
The verb is aparcar (to park). If we just added the regular -é ending for the I form in the past tense, it would be spelled aparcé. In Spanish, a c before an e makes a soft sound, but we need to keep the hard k sound of aparcar. To do this, the c changes to qu, making it aparqué.
Why does pagué have a u in it?
Just like with aparqué, we have to protect the sound of the original verb, which is pagar (to pay). If we wrote pagé, the g before an e would make a throaty h sound. To keep the hard g sound from pagar, we must add a silent u, changing the spelling to pagué.
Why use mal here instead of malo?
Malo is an adjective meaning bad, which describes nouns (like a bad car). Here, you are describing how you performed the action of parking. We use the adverb mal to mean badly or poorly.
Does doscientos change its ending depending on the noun?
Yes! The numbers in the hundreds (from 200 to 900) must agree with the gender of the noun they count. Since euros is a masculine plural noun, we use the masculine plural form doscientos. If the fine were in a feminine currency like pounds (libras), it would be doscientas libras.

Learn Anoche aparqué mal y pagué una multa de doscientos euros 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
Start learning Spanish →