In Spanish the English word "ago" is expressed with hace +
a period of time. Notice the two different syntactical
arrangements in the following two sentences, the only real
difference being the addition of the conjunction que in the
second example. Either order is equally acceptable.
Llegué a México hace dos meses.(I arrived in Mexico two months ago.)
Hace cinco minutos que llegó a la
reunión.(He got to the meeting five minutes
ago.)
When something has been going on for a period of time
and is continuing, such as I have been studying Spanish
for two hours (or, It makes two hours that I have been
studying Spanish,) the following construction is used: hace
+ a period of time + que + a verb in the present
tense.
Hace dos meses que estoy aquí.* (I have
been here for two months.)
Hace un año que vivo allí.* (I
have lived there for a year.)
* There is also an inverted form of these
expressions, which can be expressed using the expression desde
hace:Estoy aquí desde hace dos meses and
Vivo allí desde hace un
año.
When something had been going on for a period of time
and was continuing until something else happened, such as
I had been studying Spanish for two hours until the party
began, a construction similar to the previous one is used,
although in this case the imperfect indicative must be used in both
verbs.
Hacía dos meses que estaba aquí...*
(I had been here for two months...)
Hacía un año que vivía
allí...* (I had lived there for a year...)
* As above, there is also an inverted form of
these expressions, which can be expressed using the expression
desde hacía:Estaba aquí desde
hacía dos meses and Vivía allí
desde hacía un año.
Hacer in
weather expressions
To describe weather conditions that one sees, one uses
hay+ the
weather phenomenon. Otherwise, one uses
hace + the weather phenomenon.
Hace calor hoy.(It's hot today.)
Ayer hacía frío.(Yesterday it
was cold.)
Hace mucho viento en Chicago.(It's very windy
in Chicago.)