Answers
May 07, 2008 - 02:22 PM
In Spanish, the third person conjugation of verbs (for he/she/it/formal you eg. está, es, sale, compra, va, etc.) can be confusing (I’m talking from experience too!) in that if the subject is left out. So sometimes it’s hard to discern exactly what you’re talking about. If the sentence were simply ’A que hora va a salir?’ the subject of the ’va’ verb could be either the bus, the bus-driver, you (in usted form) and any number of things depending on the situation at hand. If the situation is ambiguous, it’s normal to put in the subject.But in your example of "A que hora va a salir este autobus?" the ’este autobus’ is showing exactly what the subject of the ’va’ is. Though what you said about "At what time are you going to leave this bus?" also could be understood from that sentence but it that case I would put in ’A que hora va a salir usted de este autobus’. In the past I have worked as an English teacher and I know that ambiguous sentences occur in English as well, especially with words like ’round’ or ’get’ or ’should’ which can be interpreted in many ways!