Repeating Yourself With a Purpose

Every once in a while as you study Spanish you'll come across a sentence construction that doesn't make a lot of sense — and that may be difficult to figure out if you haven't studied it before. One of them is the forma reduplicativa, the doubled verb, in a sentence such as this, taken from a love song: Pase lo que pase estoy a tu lado. The forma reduplicativa there is the pase lo que pase, which is a way of saying "whatever happens." The double use of a verb here is a special use of the subjunctive mood.

If you want to know more about the subjunctive mood, be sure to check our overview of verb moods.