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Linguaholic

past subjunctive and conditional


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How would I say in spanish:

"it was possible that we could have put more than one answer"

I think that it should be subjunctive since es posible que triggers the subjunctive, but it is also conditional. This is what I thought it would be:

"Fue posible que nos hubieramos puesto mas que una repuesta"

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Hey rbose, 

This is very context specific answer. If the speaker is positive that they could have put more than one answer, then they use indicative (regular) tense, and if the speaker is not sure if they could have put more than one answer or not, they would indeed use the past/imperfect subjunctive. 

If the speaker is unsure, the translation I would give for this is "Era posible que nosotros pudieramos ponerse más de una contesta." 

If the speaker IS sure, I would say "Era posible que nosotros pudimos ponerse más de una contesta"

Have you studied the imperfect tense yet? It is used for events or actions in the past that were repeated or that lasted extended periods of time. I used this tense in my sentence with "era", which in this case is the he/she/you (formal)/it conjugation. 

Also, "respuesta" or "contesta" would both be acceptable in this context. "Contesta" specifically means "answer". 

I hope this helps, and if you have any more questions I'd be happy to clear something up!

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