Coulda Shoulda Woulda in Spanish

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda in Spanish

Remembering what we’ve just learned, let’s add another layer of complexity.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda, while not proper English, are expressions widely recognized as referring to a hypothetical past. The difference is the additional ‘have‘ which changes the tense into the past and the past participle which changes the verb from something like eat to eaten.

I could eat breakfast –> I could have eaten breakfast

We can follow the same structure in Spanish, adding the verb ‘haber‘ (to have) and the past participle.

But it’s not exactly the same in every case. Similar to what we saw above, some cases will again use the preceding verbs poder and deber, while others simply a specific conjugation.  When we conjugate either poder or deber as preceding verbs, they are then be followed by the infinitive form of haber and the past participle of the main verb. When we conjugate verbs directly (when they don’t have a preceding verb), we conjugating haber instead of the main verb. The main verb will follow haber and be conjugated into the past participle. Let’s look at specific examples:

Could Have, Should Have, May Have, Must Have (using poder & deber)

With the conditional Tense

As we saw above, ‘could‘ and ‘should‘ used poder and deber conjugated in the conditional tense followed by the infinitive.  To construct ‘could have’ and ‘should have’ we again use these same verbs, but now just add the infinitive form of haber and then the past participle of the main verb instead of the infinitive.

Yo podría estar  = I could be
Yo podría haber estado = I could have been

Yo debería estar = I should be
Yo debería haber estado = I should have been

With the present tense

We can also use deber and poder in the present tense with the verb haber. The present tense of deber expresses ‘must’ as we saw above, so adding haber will give us ‘must have‘. When we use poder in the present tense with haber, it gives us ‘can have .. ‘ in English, but that doesn’t make sense as a literal translation … I can have gone’.  A better translation would be ‘may have‘ in this case.

Yo debo ser = I must be
Yo debo haber sido = I must have been

Yo puedo ser = I can be
Yo puedo haber sido = I may have been

Will Have, Would Have, May Have (no preceding verb)

To construct ‘will‘ and ‘would‘ we relied on neither poder or deber, but instead future and conditional conjugations respectively. This is similarly the case for ‘will have‘ and ‘would have‘ but now we conjugate the verb haber in these tenses followed by the past participle of the main verb.

Yo veré  = I will see
Yo habré visto = I will have seen

Yo vería = I would see
Yo habría visto = I would have seen

Some additional forms for advanced students:

‘Would have‘ may alternatively be constructed using the subjunctive form, rather than the conditional, in scenarios in which the subjunctive is required. Specifically, we use the subjunctive past perfect of haber and the past participle.

Yo hubiera visto = I would have seen (subjunctive)

To construct ‘may‘ we used the subjunctive.  When we use the subjunctive and add haber + the past participle, we do not quite get the idea of ‘may have’ (as we have  already seen how to construct this with poder) but we get a more specific sentiment in Spanish that is closer to the English version of ‘have ever’.

Yo haya visto = I have ever seen

See the summary in the table below for all the forms we’ve just talked about here:

1. I must (do) exercise this week
2. I could eat a horse
3. I should go (to) see my parents this weekend
4. I would go to Madrid over Barcelona
5. I could have lived in Mexico last year
6. I would have gone to private school

Answers:

1. Debo hacer ejercicio esta semana
2. Podría comer un caballo
3. Debería ir a ver a mis padres este fin de semana (finde)
4. Iría a Madrid antes que a Barcelona
5. Podría haber vivido en Mexico el año pasado
6. Habría ido a la escuela privada / Hubiera ido a la escuela privada