Word
Ella deseaba que él visitara el rancho.
Meaning
She wished he would visit the ranch.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Ella deseaba que él visitara el rancho.
él
he / him (after a preposition)
ella
she / her (after a preposition)
visitar
to visit
que
that (relative pronoun, conjunction)
Questions & Answers about Ella deseaba que él visitara el rancho.
Why does this sentence use visitara instead of a regular past tense like visitó?
The verb desear (to wish or desire) triggers the subjunctive because it expresses a want or influence over someone else. Since the wishing happened in the past (deseaba), the second verb must be in the past subjunctive mood (visitara).
How exactly is the regular past subjunctive form visitara created?
To form the imperfect subjunctive, you always start with the ellos/ellas form of the simple past tense (pretérito indefinido). For visitar, that is visitaron. You drop the -ron, which leaves the stem visita-, and then add the past subjunctive ending. For él/ella/usted, the ending is -ra, giving us visitara.
The translation says "would visit". Why don't we use the Spanish conditional visitaría?
In English, it is natural to use "would" to express what we wanted to happen in the past (She wished he would visit). However, Spanish grammar rules say that wishes trigger the subjunctive. You cannot use the conditional (visitaría) after deseaba que, so the past subjunctive visitara is the only correct choice here.
Could I write visitase instead of visitara in this sentence?