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Old 11-27-2007, 01:18 AM   #4
aleCcowaN
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"CNN en español" is a good choice. You may also watch some American TV series dubbed into Spanish. Both have pretty neutral accent and careful choice of language. I think an American talk show in Spanish could be the worst option; I've watched a few minutes of that kind of shows and I had troubles to understand what these people were saying, both language and motivation.

About grammar, "I should have called" is translated as "debiera haber llamado" o "debería haber llamado". The rule is you should use conditional (debería), but speaking about imaginary or hypothetical facts in the past, is widely used in America (The Americas) imperfect subjunctive (debiera or debiese) with -ra ending, which is also grammatically correct. About using "habría llamado" or "hubiera llamado", this is a hard nut to crack, because it is subjunctive mood, a mood almost vanished in English [the remaining cases are considered just expressions: "if I were you" (not "was"), "God save the Queen" (not "saves"), and often replaced by structures containing modal verbs (should, may, etc.),]
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