Today we will dive into colloquial language to talk about the typical Spanish expression: Que yo sepa. Take a look at the blog of our Spanish school, El Rincón del Tándem, and start using Spanish like a Spanish native speaker 😊
During Spanish lessons at our school, the teachers always help students improve their Spanish speaking skills by teaching them how to use idioms and colloquial expressions.
Filler words or Spanish idioms will help you to enrich your speech in Spanish and make you sounds more authentic.
Therefore, today we are going to focus on the Spanish expression: Que yo sepa.
To begin with, this expression means “as far as I know”.
Examples:
- ¿María ha llamado esta tarde? – Que yo sepa, no = Did Maria call this afternoon? – As far as I know, she didn’t.
Secondly, the same structure can be also used with other verbs expressing knowldege or perception. In all cases, the verb must always be in the subjunctive form.
Structure:
Que + Personal pronoun (yo, tú, él, ella, etc.) + Verb in the subjunctive form
Thirdly, this structure is used to mean that what we are saying is true as fas as we know/rembember/see, etc.
Hence, if you want to let someone know that your statement, answer or the information you are giving is true to the best of your knowledge but not true in an absolute way, you can use this expression 😊
Let’s see below some examples with:
1. Verbs of knowledge and understanding (saber, recordar).
- Que nosotras sepamos, todavía Lucía no ha confirmado su asistencia = As far as we now, Lucía has not yet confirmed her assistance
- Que yo recuerde, éste es el primer año que no vamos a esquiar = As far as I can remember, this is the first year we are not going skiing.
- Que él supiera, la reunión acabó a las 8 de la noche = As far as he knew, the meeting ended at 8pm.
With verbs that indicate understading or knowledge, the verb can be only used in the present or imperfect subjunctive tenses.
2. Verbs of perception (ver, oír, leer, etc.)
- ¿Ya han transmitido en la radio las noticias sobre el tiempo? – Que yo haya oído, todavía no = Has the weather news been broadcast on the radio yet? – As far as I have heard, not yet
- Que yo haya visto, no queda nada de comer en la nevera = As far as I have seen, there is nothing left to eat in the fridge
- Según lo que nos dijo Marta, que ella hubiera oído, el hotel estaba completo = According to what Marta told us, as far as she had heard, the hotel was fully booked
Unlike the verbs of knowledge, with verbs of perception we have to use the present perfect and past perfect of subjunctive.
We hope you have found this post on the Spanish expressions: que yo sepa useful.
Finally, you want to learn Spanish from scratch or upgrade your knowledge, El Rincón del Tándem Spanish school gives you the chance to do it by having fun, here in Valencia 😊
Take a look at our Spanish courses!
¡Hasta pronto!
