si no hagués estat per
“si no hagués estat per” — had it not been for in Catalan. Phrase, level B1. Literally "if it had not been for": the counterfactual. Had it not been for the rain, the fire would have reached the town. In a live sentence: “Si no hagués estat per la pluja, l'incendi hauria arribat al poble” — Had it not been for the rain, the fire would have reached the town. A word from the everyday Catalan course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Catalan | si no hagués estat per |
| Translation | had it not been for |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
Literally "if it had not been for": the counterfactual. Had it not been for the rain, the fire would have reached the town
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- Si no hagués estat per la pluja, l'incendi hauria arribat al pobleHad it not been for the rain, the fire would have reached the town
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “had it not been for” in Catalan?
«si no hagués estat per». In a live sentence: “Si no hagués estat per la pluja, l'incendi hauria arribat al poble” — Had it not been for the rain, the fire would have reached the town. Phrase, level B1.
Why does this word look the way it does?
Literally "if it had not been for": the counterfactual. Had it not been for the rain, the fire would have reached the town. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.