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- "Yo sería más fuerte si hicie…
"Yo sería más fuerte si hiciera más ejercicio."
Translation:I would be stronger if I were to exercise more.
76 Comments
I realize some of you may be tempted to ignore the subjunctive. I tried to avoid it for awhile, but it is quite important in Spanish. I am told that without grasping it fully it is impossible to ever become a fluent Spanish speaker. So now I am grabbing the subjunctive bull by the horns, to borrow an apt metaphor.
511
Not really. In Spanish, it is quite natural. The most common examples could be taught at an early stage, without too much explanation.
Just a note: There isn't really a normal verb for exercise in Spanish. Instead it seems they use the phrase "hacer ejercicio" to mean the verb "to exercise."
So..
Hago ejercicio: I exercise
Hacemos ejercicio: We exercise.
Etc...My point was it isn't necessary to translate "hacer ejercicio" as "do exercise" or "make exercise" Just exercise is fine. :)
511
Yes, that is wrong. Look at the conditionals in the English language. You are trying to use the second conditional. "I would be stronger if I exercised more". Find "conditionals" in Google, there are very good explanations.
511
I answered I would be stronger if I would do more exercise
It is not proper English, because it is not a correct form of a conditional, but I gambled that DuoLingo would accept it in this way.
189
In Spanish, conditional + conditional in an if, then clause is not allowed. The form in this sentence if if + subjunctive, then conditional.
If you are in the habit of using two conditionals in if, then statements in English and then try to translate it literally back the other way to Spanish, you will have problems because it doesn't work.
"If I were to do/take more exercise" is correct but may sound overly formal and not natural to many people because the subjunctive is being used less and less especially in spoken English.
The alternative is to use the simple past tense in the if clause for a hypothetical situation. "If I did more exercise" (US) or "If I took more exercise." (UK)
It's the subjunctive. As in "If I were rich, I would buy a big house." You used that when you are speaking theoretically. It's not likey you will become rich, and in this case it's not likely the speaker will exercise more. This is fairly advanced grammar in English, and probably in Spanish as well.
You're sort of mixing tenses, SyamkumarR. "I would have been stronger" refers to a time in the past (I don't know the technical names for the various past tenses, but maybe someone else can tell us.) "If I were to do more exercise" is the subjunctive, which is a special case; it doesn't refer to a real situation but more something that you wish could happen or probably could happen. For example, "If I were rich, I would buy you a house." So, to make sense, you can either say, "I would be stronger if I were to do more exercise." or "I would have been stronger if I had done more exercise."
muchas gracias arturohiero! i'm still thinking whether to upgrade my language skills above the street level. for example- in Israel, the street language is not that respectful or correct either. iv'e been to Spain , and i have noticed that the formal way and more correct language is much more appreciated than colloquial. how about the U.S?
1004
Hi blackbirdfly,
The correct answer would be "I would be stronger if I DID more exercise." If you think about it in these simple terms:
I would be stronger (now) if I did more exercise (in the past). I will be stronger (in the future) if I do more exercise (now).
If you do more exercise now, you will be stronger in the future, but it would have no effect on you in the present. Therefore, conditional English phrases like this require the past tense.
Of course, the speaker is talking in a more general continuous term, 'if I had done, do, and will do', but it's a temporal concept.
I hope this helps!!
371
Second time I used the verb "to take" exercise in this and a previous lesson and both times marked wrong. " I would be stronger if I took more exercise" seems to be a much more natural way of speaking than "did more exercise".
I have never heard "to take exercise". I live in the States, and have lived in 10 of them to be exact, including the southeast, pacific northwest, southwest, intermountain west, and midwest regions. I can't say that I've ever heard that phrase. You either exercise (verb) or you do exercise (usually used as noun, as in "I did my morning exercises today"). Hope this helps!
1004
Must be a regional thing - completely the opposite for me, "to do exercise" sounds right and "to take exercise" sounds completely wrong. So I think they chose one so as to not confuse learners of English.
189
"Take exercise" is not wrong. It's British. "I would be stronger if I took more exercise" should be accepted.
1667
"were to exercise more"? wtf? could someone explain it to me? i am not a native speaker.
Heeh heeh... don't we all?
Edit: The English Subjunctive and Conditionals require that we use the past verb for hypothetical situations, specifically the "if"-clauses. We're supposed' to use "were" regardless of the Person aand Number of the subject, so it's "*If I were ..., If he were..., If you were..., If it were..., and so on. Please, also note that subjunctive isn't as important in English nowadays as it is in other languages like Spanish, unless you're writing business/formal letters or doing school papers. Nowadays, esp in everyday speech, many people don't observe the subjunctive anymore so they just say, "If I was you, ..."
1667
Normally I'd say my English is not that bad. But that could be owed to the fact that I hear much worse English at work or in my private environment.
379
One of their corrections eouates 'hiciera' with 'got', as in 'if I got more exercise' (?)
189
That would be correct in some dialects. In any case, you have to use either the subjunctive or simple past tense in the if statement describing a hypothetical situation. There are a few verbs that are correct if you conjugate them correctly.
Subjunctive:
-
If I were to take more exercise
-
If I were to do more exercise
-
If I were to take more exercise
Past tense:
-
If I got more exercise
-
If I did more exercise
-
If I took more exercise
Duo likes us to be as specific with our translation as we can, and the phrase "hacer ejercicio" is "to do exercise" or "to exercise". "Had" would need the verb "tener", which is not in Duo's sentence. Plus, I don't know that a native speaker would use "tener más ejercicio" - I've always heard "hacer" used in this context.
1004
Well, you honestly wouldn't. That makes no sense - which is how Spanish works so largely on context. But hypothetically, you would just add the pronoun - "Yo seriá más fuerte si él/ella hiciera más ejercicio."
I think a more correct translation for "yo seria mas fuerte si hiciera mas ejercico "would be "I would be stronger if I had exercised more" or even better, "I would be stronger if I would have exercised more." The reason being that the imperfect subjunctive is used here, not the present subjunctive. "Yo seria mas fuerte si haga mas ejercicio" would be more correct for the "...if I were to exercise more" translation.
Perhaps someone can tell me why I am wrong.
131
Surely you do not ever 'do' exercise, you 'take' exercise. I put ' I would be stronger if I took more exercise', please tell me whats's wrong with that.
189
There is nothing wrong with either "do exercise" US or "take exercise" UK.
' I would be stronger if I took/did more exercise' (simple past) and ' I would be stronger if I were to take/do more exercise' (subjunctive) should all be accepted.