Spanish Translation
Eso terminó mejor de lo que esperaba.
Can I say gewartet instead?
Is there a difference between the two verbs or can they be used interchangeably?
No, “gewartet” does not work here.
They aren’t interchangeable.
- “etwas erwarten” means “to expect something”
- “auf etwas warten” means “to wait for something”
In their past tenses:
- “I expected” → “Ich erwartete”
- “I waited” → “Ich wartete” or alternatively “Ich habe gewartet”
You could say: “Am Ende war es besser, als das, worauf ich gewartet hatte.”
The difference:
- Let’s say you order some item X, wait for it, and it’s even better than expected. That would be the original sentence.
- The sentence I just gave you means: You ordered X, wait for X, but you get a different item Y, which turns out to be better than the item X for which you originally waited.
Another thing: “warten” can have different meanings, depending on the context.
Usually, it means to “wait”. But it could also mean “to maintain”. “Eine Maschine warten” means “to maintain a machine”.
If you say “gewartet” instead of “erwartet”, it means either “to wait for” or “to maintain”, which both don’t make much sense in this sentence.
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