Estaba seguro de que te encontraría aquí.

English Translation

I was sure that I would find you here.

Would it be more natural to say “de encontrarte”, instead of making a subclause?

English Translation

I was sure that I would find you here.

I asked native speakers and they said no. Sabía que te encontraría aquí would also be possible, but they say it sounds a little like pero no te encontré. But de encontrarte seems incorrect.

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Interesting! I find that the corpus has some examples using the infinitive, in the present tense:

  • Estoy seguro de haberle visto en alguna parte, pero no me acuerdo de quién es.
  • Estoy seguro de tener éxito.
  • No estoy seguro de poder ir con vosotros.

So maybe it’s the past tense that makes using the infinitive impossible.

La frase «Estaba seguro de que te encontraría aquí» no denota el significado de «pero no te encontré». Porque también puede significar lo contrario, es decir, pero te encontré.

It sounds more natural the way it is written now. If you want to use ‘‘de encontrarte’’ maybe you would need to change the conjugation of the verb estar. To me Estaba seguro de encontrarte aquí sounds about right, but I wouldn’t say it like that.

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The incredible answer from Claude AI:

If those data points are real and not invented, I am blow away by the quality of the reply…

One strange thing about the Claude AI answer is the combination of “seguro de que” and the subjunctive, as, to my knowledge, this construction is normally followed by the indicative (in the affirmative).

We can ask… but can we trust?

image

My spider sense tells me that it is all hallucinated and fake!..

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