Breakdown of No llames al administrador tan tarde.
no
no / not
al
personal a + the (m)
llamar
to call
tarde
late
tan
as / so (degree)
el administrador
the property manager; the administrator
Questions & Answers about No llames al administrador tan tarde.
Why is the verb form llames instead of llamas or llama?
In Spanish, negative commands (telling someone not to do something) always use the present subjunctive form. Because this is an informal command directed at tú, the affirmative would be llama ("call"), but the negative must be no llames ("don't call").
Why do we say al administrador instead of just el administrador?
Al is the mandatory contraction of the preposition a and the article el. The a here is the "personal a," which is required in Spanish when the direct object of a verb is a specific person. Because the property manager is a person, we must say llamar a + el administrador.
Does administrador specifically mean "property manager"?
Why do we use tan here instead of tanto?
We use tan because tarde ("late") functions as an adverb in this sentence. Tan is used immediately before adjectives and adverbs to mean "so" (as in "so late"). You would only use tanto before a noun to mean "so much" or "so many" (for example, tanto tiempo, "so much time").
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