Common Time Expressions with “Hacer” (Quiz Included)
You may already know that the Spanish verb hacer means “to do” or “to make.” But a lot of expressions we use to talk about time use forms of hacer to mean “ago,” “since,” “in,” or “for.”
Knowing these expressions will help you talk about when something happened and better understand Spanish speakers in everyday conversations. Let’s go over the most common time expressions and questions with hacer.
Contents
- Hace with Actions that Took Place Some Time Ago
- Hace with Actions that Started in the Past and Continue Today
- Hacía with Past Actions
- Asking “How Long” with Hace/Hacía
- Quiz on Time Expressions with Hacer
- And One More Thing…
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Hace with Actions that Took Place Some Time Ago
Hace (from the verb hacer) is often used to mean “ago.” For example, hace tres días means “three days ago.”
We can use two different constructions with hace to indicate how much time has passed since an action took place. Here’s the first:
[past tense action] + hace + [time expression]
Here are a few examples:
Compré mi primer coche hace cinco años. (I bought my first car five years ago.)
Mi hermana se casó hace seis meses. (My sister got married six months ago.)
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Nuestros vecinos volvieron de sus vacaciones hace unos días. (Our neighbors came back from their vacation a few days ago.)
This second construction serves the same purpose:
hace + [time expression] + (que) + [past tense action]
As you can see, the order of the words is different, and we’ve added an optional que to the construction, but the intrinsic meaning is the same. You can translate this into English as “it’s been [amount of time] since [action].”
Let’s use the same examples as above to see the difference between these two constructions:
Hace cinco años que compré mi primer coche. (It’s been five years since I bought my first car.)
Hace seis meses mi hermana se casó. (It’s been six months since my sister got married.)
Hace unos días que nuestros vecinos volvieron de sus vacaciones. (It’s been a few days since our neighbors came back from their vacation.)
Hace with Actions that Started in the Past and Continue Today
Hace can also mean “in” or “for” when it’s used to indicate that an action started in the past and is still taking place today. Once again, we have two different ways of conveying this meaning.
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[present tense action] + desde hace + [time expression]
We use this construction to say how long something has or hasn’t been happening. For example:
Estoy esperando desde hace dos horas. (I’ve been waiting for two hours.)
No como carne desde hace tres años. (I haven’t eaten meat in three years.)
Está lloviendo desde hace media hora. (It’s been raining for half an hour.)
As you can see, the English equivalent for this structure is the present perfect or present perfect continuous tense. Here’s an example from a video clip on the FluentU program:
We can also use a similar construction but with the present perfect tense. For example:
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Here’s another construction we can use with the same intrinsic meaning as the previous one:
hace + [time expression] + que + [present tense action]
Notice that the order of the words is different, desde has disappeared, and que is compulsory now. Here are some examples:
Hace cinco días que no bebo café. (It’s been five days since I last drank coffee. / I haven’t drunk coffee in five days.)
Hace 10 años que vivo aquí. (I’ve been living here for 10 years.)
Hace dos meses que voy al gimnasio cada día. (I’ve been going to the gym every day for two months.)
Hacía with Past Actions
The use of hacía is possibly the most difficult, but it’s also incredibly helpful when you want to talk about actions in the past that happened at the same time or stopped happening.
hacía + [time expression] + que + [imperfect tense action] + cuando + [past tense action]
Use this construction when you want to say something had been happening for a certain amount of time when another action began. For example:
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Hacía seis meses que estudiaba inglés cuando me mudé a Londres. (I’d been studying English for six months when I moved to London.)
Hacía dos horas que María corría cuando empezó a llover. (María had been running for two hours when it started raining.)
Hacía cinco años que Juan vivía en Barcelona cuando eso ocurrió. (Juan had been living in Barcelona for five years when that happened.)
As you can see, the English translations use the past perfect continuous. Here’s another construction with a slightly different meaning:
hacía + [time expression] + que no + [imperfect tense action]
When you use this construction with the negative form of the imperfect, you’re implying that the action hadn’t happened for some time but has happened again. For example:
¡Esa pizza estaba deliciosa! Hacía mucho tiempo que no comía pizza. (That pizza was delicious! I hadn’t eaten pizza in a long time.)
Gracias a Dios por la lluvia. Hacía un mes que no llovía y las plantas se estaban muriendo. (Thank God for the rain. It hadn’t rained in a month and the plants were dying.)
You can also include a time expression to indicate when exactly the action happened again:
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Hacía más de 10 años que no la veía cuando nos encontramos el mes pasado. (I hadn’t seen her in over 10 years when we ran into each other last month.)
This third construction again means the same as the first one, but now we start our sentence with the subject:
[imperfect tense action] + (desde) hacía + [time expression] + cuando + [past tense action]
Notice that desde is not compulsory in this construction, but from the point of view of a native speaker, it sounds much better if you use it. For example:
Antonio vivía en Madrid desde hacía dos meses cuando encontró trabajo. (Antonio had been living in Madrid for two months when he found a job.)
Estudiaba polaco desde hacía un año cuando te conocí. (I’d been learning Polish for a year when I met you.)
Bebía alcohol desde hacía ocho años cuando lo dejó. (He’d been drinking alcohol for eight years when he quit.)
You might also see hacía used in some simpler time expressions, like in the song “Bye Bye” by Vilma Palma e Vampiros:
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Or in the trailer for the Spanish version of The Lego Movie:
Now that you know how to use hace/hacía to talk about time, let’s have a look at it in questions. These constructions are similar but a bit easier.
Asking “How Long” with Hace/Hacía
There are many different ways to ask “how long” in Spanish. We’ll go over four different constructions using hace and hacía here.
Use this construction when you want to ask how long something has been going on:
¿Cuánto (tiempo) hace que + [present tense action]?
For example:
¿Cuánto tiempo hace que vives aquí? (How long have you been living here?)
¿Cuánto tiempo hace que estudias español? (How long have you been studying Spanish?)
¿Cuánto hace que eres fan de Shakira? (How long have you been a fan of Shakira?)
The short answer to this question form is hace + [period of time]:
Hace cinco años. (For five years.)
Hace seis meses. (For six months.)
Here’s a construction we use to ask how long an action had been going on before it stopped.
¿Cuánto (tiempo) hacía que + [imperfect tense action]?
For example, when talking about someone who has passed away, you could ask:
¿Cuánto tiempo hacía que lo conocías? (How long had you known him?)
Hacía unos 20 años. Fuimos juntos a la escuela. (Around 20 years. We went to school together.)
When we use this construction in the negative, the meaning changes. We know that something hadn’t happened for some time but has happened again, and we want to know how long it had been since it happened last:
¿Cuánto tiempo hacía que no bebías café? (How long had it been since you last drank coffee?)
Hacía cuatro meses. (It had been four months.)
¿Cuánto hacía que no comías carne? (How long had it been since you last ate meat?)
Hacía cinco años. (It had been five years.)
Quiz on Time Expressions with Hacer
Now that you’ve learned some time expressions with hacer, it’s time to test your knowledge. Take the short quiz below without looking at the answers above, and just refresh the page if you want to start over or retake it.
You can use these structures as guides to create your own sentences in Spanish. The key to success is practice, so grab a pen and a piece of paper and get started!
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And One More Thing…
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