Breakdown of El payaso le recomendó a la malabarista que comprase otro aro.
comprar
to buy
a
personal a (marks a person object)
que
that (relative pronoun, conjunction)
le
to him / to her / to you (formal) / him (direct object, male person)
otro
other / another
recomendar
to recommend
el payaso
the clown
el aro
the hoop
la malabarista
the juggler
Questions & Answers about El payaso le recomendó a la malabarista que comprase otro aro.
Why does this sentence use the subjunctive comprase instead of a normal past tense like compró?
The verb recomendar expresses influence or a request. When you recommend that someone else do something, Spanish requires the subjunctive for the second verb. Because the recommendation happened in the past (recomendó), the second verb must be in the past subjunctive (comprase).
How is the form comprase made, and could I use comprara instead?
Yes, you can absolutely use comprara! The imperfect subjunctive has two sets of endings: -ara/-iera and -ase/-iese. Both mean exactly the same thing. To form it, take the 'ellos' form of the preterite (compraron), drop the -ron, and add the new ending (-se for he/she/it). In Spain, the -se endings are very common.
Why are both le and a la malabarista used in the same sentence?
In Spanish, when a sentence has an indirect object (the person receiving the action, here a la malabarista), it is standard and usually required to also include the matching indirect object pronoun (le). Even though it feels repetitive in English, it sounds completely natural in Spanish.
Since malabarista ends in -a, is it always a feminine word?
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