¿admitía o admitiría?

Gennady F.C1Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

¿admitía o admitiría?

In one of the examples above, shouldn't  it be admitiría? Or the translation should be She didn't admit 

No admitía que vosotras estuvieseis enfadadas con vuestros maridos.
She wouldn't admit that you were angry with your husbands.


Asked 5 years ago
InmaKwiziq team memberCorrect answer

Hola Gennady

The Spanish in this case doesn't admit "admitiría".

We have this sentence in Spanish:

No admitía que vosotras estuvieseis enfadadas con vuestros maridos.

This could mean two things:

1. She didn't admit that you were angry with your husbands. In this case it is a simple statement in the past. (She didn't admit...), or

2. She wouldn't admit that you were angry with your husbands. In this case, it is implying that there was some kind of pressure on her to admit that, but she wouldn't, as if she was stubborn and wouldn't do it. This is what we went for in the English translation. For this specific meaning, in English you would use the conditional "she wouldn't..." even when referring to a past event, but in Spanish we cannot use the conditional to convey this; we use the past tense "No admitía..."

If you see this other typical example where in English the conditional is used, but in Spanish that wouldn't work; imagine you are trying to feed your son but he refuses to eat his food. The result is you end up giving up because it was impossible. Then the next day you are telling this to a friend:

"...and he WOULDN'T eat his food!

In Spanish if this happened, we wouldn't use the conditional, we would say:

"¡...y no se comía/comió la comida!

I hope this helps,

Saludos

Inma

¿admitía o admitiría?

In one of the examples above, shouldn't  it be admitiría? Or the translation should be She didn't admit 

No admitía que vosotras estuvieseis enfadadas con vuestros maridos.
She wouldn't admit that you were angry with your husbands.


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