Breakdown of Siento que algo no va bien.
no
no / not
bien
well / fine
ir
to go
que
that (relative pronoun, conjunction)
algo
something
sentir
to feel (something); to be sorry
Questions & Answers about Siento que algo no va bien.
Why is va in the indicative and not the subjunctive here? Doesn't sentir que trigger the subjunctive?
It depends on the meaning of sentir. When sentir que expresses an emotion like sorrow (for example, "I am sorry that..."), it triggers the subjunctive. However, in this sentence, siento que means "I sense that" or "I perceive that." Because it declares a perception or belief rather than an emotion, it takes the indicative (va).
Could I say Me siento que algo no va bien?
No, you cannot use the reflexive sentirse here. You use sentirse when describing your own physical or emotional state, usually followed by an adjective or an adverb (like me siento cansado). When expressing that you mentally sense or perceive an external fact, you must use the non-reflexive sentir followed by que.
Why does the Spanish sentence use no va bien instead of a more literal translation like no es correcto?
How else could I naturally express "Something is wrong" in this context?
In English, we often rely on the adjective "wrong," but Spanish frequently expresses this idea with verbs of motion or adverbs. Alongside algo no va bien, you could also say algo va mal (something is going poorly) or simply algo pasa (something is happening/up). Using a direct dictionary translation like algo es incorrecto for a gut feeling would sound robotic.
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