7A Sol y viento
Hacer in Expressions of Time
You may recall that hacer can be used with the preteite to express the concept of ago.
However, hacer can also be used with other tense and verb forms to express various temporal
relationships. Examine the chart.
HACER + time + que …..
PRESENT
Hace mucho tiempo que vivo
en Chicago.
I have lived in Chicago for a
long time.
PRETERITE
Me enfermé hace unos días.
/ Hace unos días que me
enfermé.
I got sick a few days ago.
Hace más de un año que no
veo al médico
It ‘s been over a year since I’ve
seen the doctor.
IMPERFECT
Hacía varios meses que
trabajaba en la novela.
I had been working on the
novel for several months.
Hacía unos meses que no veía
a Ramón.
It had been several months
since I saw Ramón.
Note the following based on the example in the chart.
1. With the present and the imperfect, hace and hacía are used to express for if the
sentence is affirmative and since if the sentence is negative. When used with the
preterite, only hace is used, and the meaning expressed is ago.
2. When used with the present and the imperfect, que is typically used. Que can be
optional with the preterite. If it is used, the hace phrase appears before the verb. If it is
omitted, the hace phrase comes after the verb.
3. When used with the present and the imperfect, both verbs are in the same tense. That
is, hace is used with the present tense to express since in a present time context, and
hacía is used with the imperfect to express since in a past time context.
4. With the present and imperfect constructions, the English equivalent requires a helping
verb (e.g., have, has, had). No helping verb is needed in Spanish in these constructions.
To ask for how long or since when, use a version of ¿Cuánto tiempo hace / hacía que. . .?
¿Cuánto tiempo hace que estudias español?
¿Cuánto tiempo hace que no hablas con Julio?
¿Cuánto tiempo hacía que tenían problemas cuando se divorciaron?