The movie was longer than I expected it to be.
My expectation here would be “di quanto mi aspettassi.” Is this construction grammatical? Is it not in the subjunctive because the word “quello” was used instead of “quanto”? If so, is “quello” always a acceptable grammatical alternative to “quanto”?
I would translate the Italian sentence
“The movie was longer than the one I expected”
and in this case I would not use the subjunctive but I can cite no rule.
IMHO your translation “di quanto mi aspettassi” is the correct one for the English sentence.
Ciao MRgK! I would translate it as “The film was longer than I was expecting” because of the che and the ongoing aspettavo. But now you’ve got me thinking …
?
I would instinctively not have used the subjunctive here, as what you expected is “real”, not hypothetical, but maybe my instincts are shaped by my Spanish.
I believe there’s a difference between “di quello che” and “di quel que”; the former is neutre, which should be a good match for “what”.