evillakers1

Ambiguous situation that our AP Spanish Lang gave us:

About the movie, Pan's Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo del Toro:
Mercedes pensó el capitán Vidal es un monstruo.

We're supposed to identify error in the highlighted word in the above sentence, which in this case was the conjugation of pensar.

Would the tense be present since the second clause is in the present?

JalliDalli

Yeah. I wish there was a que in that sentence. It sounds kind of awkward like that. But yes, I would I changed it to piensa.

myuusmeow

I'd say it needs a que too but as also said, like in English, shouldn't both verbs be in the same tense? Ie both past or both present etc.

JalliDalli

^ Yeah, I'd say the verb agreement would be the bigger mistake.

Just to know, was there an option that allowed for a "que"? (I didn't take AP Spanish, I took IB Spanish HL)

CantConcentrate

Yeah, there kind of needs to be a "que" in there somewhere...

Mercedes pensó el capitán Vidal es un monstruo.
This is actually fine, in respect to pensar, unless the question indicated that this isn't in the preterit/past tense.

Otherwise...
Mercedes piensa que el capitán Vidal es un monstruo.

aares1

I'd say that without the "que" it's grammatically incorrect. This is the type of sentence where you can't just omit it and hope that fixing the verb will make up for it.

collegerm

Google:

word reference forum

Native speakers will answer your question... and I usually get a response within 2 hours.

The problem is there isn't a "QUE" and it should probably be:

Mércedes pensó que el capitan fue un monstruo.