How to say you ‘almost’ did something in Spanish

Let’s start with a translation:

Casi me caigo de culo
I almost fall on my ass

Hmm.  “I almost fall…”.  That doesn’t sound quite right does it?  At least not in English it doesn’t.  The correct English translation would be:

I almost fell on my ass

So what’s going on here?  There’s a simple explanation for this.

While in English we use the past tense to talk about what we almost did, in Spanish you have to use the present tense.  Don’t ask me why, that’s just the way it works.

Let’s look at some more examples.

Casi me quedo dormido en clase
I almost fell asleep in class

Casi me olvido de tu cumpleaños
I almost forgot about your birthday

Casi rompo la dieta
I almost broke my diet

Casi me muero de la risa
I almost died laughing

Pan comida, ¿verdad?

This bit of Spanish is really straight-forward and easy to integrate into your Spanish toolbox, even if you’re a beginner.  The thing I found surprising is I had been learning Spanish for years without knowing or even thinking about how to say something almost happened until I was listening to my copy of Learning Spanish Like Crazy Level 3.  It’s good stuff, check it out.  One of these days I’ll get around to doing a review of it.

Here are some other posts you may find useful:

1.  How to say you forgot something in Spanish
2.  Expressing accidental actions in Spanish
3.  How to say could have in Spanish

I hope you all learned something from this post.  Don’t forget to follow this blog on Facebook.

¡Hasta la próxima!