No me gusta que me hagan quedar como un tonto.

I wonder why ‘hagan quedar’, which is the plural present subj. 3rd person. Just a bit perplexed. Quedar is a complex verb with many meanings depending on the construction of a sentence (context), so I’ll need to continue seeing it to try to more fully grasp its various meanings.

But back to my question, there’s nothing ‘plural’ about this sentence yet we see ‘hagan’. :scratching my head:

English Translation

I don’t like being made a fool of.

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OK, its not a compound (quedar in infinitive form). Hmmm…

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To understand this sentence I’d like to start with another example:

si no vamos, quedamos mal - it’ll look bad if we don’t go

Here’s quedamos mal means something akin to we will lose face or we’ll look bad. With that in mind, quedar como un tonto means to look like a fool. me hagan quedar como … is “They make me look like …”

Why is hacer in me hagan quedar … plural? It’s because the speaker is referring to a non-specific group of people. We often do the same in English, e.g. “They say it’s going to rain buckets tomorrow”.

And finally, why the subjunctive? No me gusta que… is expressing an emotion.

Hope this helps.

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Helped quite a bit! Excellent explanation… Thanks, blogscot!

“Quedar” is a tricky word for me because it has various meanings often within a phrase. There are several Spanish words (more often than not verbs) which can be confusing. There’s the common, obvious meanings (i.e., quedar “to stay” “to remain”) but then the tricky meanings. “Dar” is a verb which has a mile long of definitions. “Llevar” confuses me at times (much better at that word since Clozemaster). “Echar”, another one of many.

But again, thanks for chiming in blogscot! Much appreciated.

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