Breakdown of Desde que está ausente, nadie sabe su paradero.
estar
to be (location/state)
su
his / her / their / your (formal)
saber
to know (facts, information)
nadie
no one
desde que
since (+ a verb)
ausente
absent
el paradero
the whereabouts
Questions & Answers about Desde que está ausente, nadie sabe su paradero.
Why is 'está' in the present tense when the English translation says 'he's been'?
In Spanish, when an action or state started in the past and is still ongoing right now, we use desde que followed by the present tense. English requires the present perfect for this concept. Since the person is still absent today, está ausente is the grammatically correct way to express this.
What exactly is a 'paradero'?
Could I just say 'desde está ausente' without the 'que'?
This lesson is about the Conditional Continuous. How could we use it to guess what he was doing while absent?
The Conditional Continuous is used to make epistemic guesses about ongoing actions in the past. Even though this sentence uses the present tense to state a fact, if you wanted to guess what he was probably doing while missing, you would combine the conditional of estar with a gerund. For example, to say 'He was probably hiding' or 'He must have been hiding,' you would say Estaría escondiéndose.
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