Also, Karl, we’re talking about “combinar,” sussed out (hey, I don’t think I’ve ever used that expression–you people bring that out of me) as “combinen” in the sentence under discussion. I don’t think such a verb “combiner” exists in Spanish. French, yes, and knowing my habit of rummaging through the one cerebral junk drawer I have where I keep all my foreign languages, I might have just as easily come up with that. But then I would have zapped it into “combinan.”
I think once I posted how I misunderstood the meaning of a Hebrew word (trilateral root) because I understood it’s use with German grammar. (Some other time, perhaps, I’ll go into it. )
ETA: I now see the Apple autocorrect. I leave it in in honor of the Bilderberg conference now getting underway, I believe, and clearly Apple itself, by stepping in when I use the word “Hebrew,” is trying to warn me.
My question was regarding the use of the subjunctive vs indicative following que or cómo/como. The verb is the same, combinar
Combinan is present indicative form, combinen is present subjunctive form for third person plural verb combinar. Notice than when writing “que combinen…”, the subjunctive form is used, making that conditional to your first part. Reading on como, it seems it could be, or used to be used in a similar way of “que” in that phrase… IOW, at some point it would’ve been OK to say “como combinen tus zapatos” (without the accent). Now, though, that construct is not used and favored, and “que” is used instead.
But when I’m using “cómo combinan…”, it is a declaration, and the second part is not conditional.
So, it is also pondering if you used “como combinEn”, and she corrected with “que combinEn” instead of “cómo combinAn”. And both are slightly different ways of correcting the same phrase, but both have slightly different interpretations/meanings.
Leo Bloom, KarlGrenze didn’t say “combiner” vs combinar, but combinen vs combinan; that is, the subjunctive simple present of combinar vs the indicative simple present of combinar. What difference a little vertical bar makes KarlGrenze, I understand what you mean about the subjunctive sounding more centered on the speaker. But, and I’m not sure I can explain this right, to me using the subjunctive in a case in which the sentence refers to the situation that’s actually taking place (her shoes and jacket actually do combine) keeps it from being an order; it would be an order if they didn’t, and then the gustar would also be in the subjunctive (me gustaría que tus zapatos y chaqueta combinaran, which would be both an order and in 99.9999% of cases an impudence).
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