Breakdown of La médica dijo que la víctima había bebido el veneno.
la médica
the doctor
beber
to drink
que
that (relative pronoun, conjunction)
decir
to say / to tell
haber
to have (auxiliary)
el veneno
the poison
la víctima
the victim
Questions & Answers about La médica dijo que la víctima había bebido el veneno.
Why do we use había bebido instead of just bebió?
This is the Past Perfect (Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto), which you are learning in this lesson. We use it to talk about a past action that happened before another past action. The victim drank the poison first, and then later the doctor talked about it (dijo). You form it with the imperfect tense of haber (here, había) plus the past participle of the verb (bebido).
I usually see el médico. Is la médica the correct way to refer to a female doctor?
Yes! While you might sometimes hear la médico, la médica is the standard and most common way to refer to a female doctor in modern Spanish.
What if the victim was a man? Would we change it to el víctimo?
No, víctima is a feminine noun (la víctima), and it stays feminine regardless of whether the actual person is male or female. Words like this have a fixed grammatical gender.
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