En nuestra vida diaria, tanto personal como en el trabajo, tenemos que enfrentarnos a situaciones difíciles y a problemas de todo tipo.

En el post de hoy veremos cómo hablar y describir problemas y dificultades en inglés. Let’s go!

Para describir problemas y dificultades podemos utilizar varias estructuras, con palabras como difficult, hard, problem, trouble…

To have difficulty
It’s difficult / hard to (do something)
I find it difficult / hard to (do something)

E.g.
I had difficulties to find my first job.
It is hard for him to understand complex technical texts.
I find it difficult to speak on the phone in English.

Más opciones con el verbo have + problems / trouble

To have problems with (something)
To have trouble with (something)
To have problems (doing something)
To have trouble (doing something)

E.g.
He usually has trouble with the wi-fi connection.
We will have problems with the budget.
They had problems installing the new version.
She has trouble writing mails in English.

Observa: utilizamos problems normalmente en plural pero trouble suele ir en singular.

Otros verbos que podemos usar para referirnos a situaciones difíciles:

To face a problem / a situation – enfrentarse a un problema

E.g.
We faced some problems when we launched the website.

To run into difficulties– encontrarse con dificultades

E.g.
They run into difficulties to change the trip arrangements.

To deal with a problem / a situation- manejar, ocuparse de un problema y tomar las acciones necesarias para solucionarlo.

En este caso, podemos utilizar varios verbos con un significado similar

To manage
To handle
To tackle

E.g.
We need to tackle this problem as soon as possible.
Customer service usually handles problems with the orders.
He will deal with the difficulties of the marketing campaign.

Hoy os dejamos unos “truquis” para utilizar los modales de obligación “must & have to” y también cómo expresar falta de obligación (lack of obligation) con los modales don’t have to, don’t need to, didn’t need to. Vamos allá!

HAVE TO / MUST

We use these verbs to say that is necessary to do something, but there are some differences:

Have to
The speaker is just giving facts. Or there’s an «outside authority» who tells you to do something.
E.g. I have to complete the report for our client.

We can use “have to” in all verb tenses.

Must
The speaker thinks is necessary, feels is his responsibility to do something.
E.g. I must finish all these paperwork today.

We only use “must” in the present tense, to express obligation in other tenses we use “have to”.
E.g. I had to finish all the paperwork last Friday.
I will have to finish all the paperwork before Friday.

DON’T HAVE TO / MUSTN’T

When used in the negative form, they mean different things:

Don’t have to /don’t need to
It means is NOT necessary that we do something.
E.g. You don’t have to bring anything.
They don’t need to bring anything.

Mustn’t
It means is necessary NOT to do something. (it’s an obligation not to do something).
E.g.He mustn’t talk to us like that.
You mustn’t tell anyone.
We mustn’t be late for the meeting.

DIDN’T NEED TO / DIDN’T HAVE TO DO

We use didn’t need to / didn’t have to meaning that something was not done because it was not necessary.
E.g. We didn’t need to call the technical services, we just fixed it ourselves.
They didn’t need to work until late. We still have time until deadline.
I didn’t have to prepare a cake, but they all appreciated it.

Parece mucho pero en realidad son tres cositas, te las resumimos:

-Must / have to > obligación, sobre todo “have to” que se puede utilizar en cualquier tiempo verbal

-Mustn’t > obligación de NO hacer algo (o prohibición de hacer algo)

-Don’t have to / don’t need to (y sus formas en pasado) > falta de obligación, o lo que es lo mismo, no es necesario hacer algo.

Esperamos que te sirva de ayuda 😉