Breakdown of ¿Había logrado una hazaña impensable antes?
un
a, an, some
haber
to have (auxiliary)
lograr
to achieve
antes
before
Questions & Answers about ¿Había logrado una hazaña impensable antes?
The current lesson focuses on the achievement structure llegar a + infinitive. Could we rewrite this sentence using that structure?
Yes, but you would want to swap the main verb. Lograr already means 'to achieve', so saying llegar a lograr sounds a bit redundant (like 'to manage to manage'). Instead, to emphasize the long effort or extreme nature of the feat, you could use a verb like realizar (to carry out): ¿Había llegado a realizar una hazaña impensable antes?
Why do we use the past perfect había logrado here instead of just the preterite logró?
Había logrado translates to 'had achieved'. We use this tense (the Pluscuamperfecto) to talk about a past action that occurred before another point in the past. The adverb antes reinforces this 'further back' timeline. If the question simply asked 'Did he achieve...?', you would use the preterite: ¿Logró...
Impensable looks closely related to the verb pensar. Is this prefix and suffix pattern common in Spanish?
What exactly is a hazaña? Is it a word I can use in everyday conversation?