“At the moment I’m struggling massively with Spanish direct and indirect object pronouns.” – Real Fast Spanish Subscriber.
This is one of the most common challenges we see Spanish students working through on a daily basis.
And, it makes sense because when you replace a Spanish noun with a direct or indirect object pronoun, there are a lot of things to think about.
You have to consider sentence order, prepositions, when you can and can’t replace objects, and a few special rules for combining direct and indirect object pronouns in a Spanish sentence.
What’s worse, sometimes Spanish natives will use a different pronoun to what’s written in the textbooks.
In this post, you’ll learn everything you need to know about Spanish direct and indirect object pronouns including what they are, how to use them when to use them, how to combine them, a rule you need to be careful with, and where Spanish natives get it backwards.
To start, let’s first discuss the concept of an object pronoun in general.
What is an object pronoun?
I’m first going to talk about how object pronouns behave in English because:
- Learning about your own language helps you learn another language.
- Spanish direct and indirect object pronouns behave in almost exactly the same way as English object pronouns except for sentence order.
So, what is an object pronoun?
A pronoun is a word that you use to substitute for a noun.
An object receives the action of the verb—either directly or indirectly (we’ll get back to this).
Thus an object pronoun is a word that you use to replace the object of a sentence.
Let’s look at an example of a simple English sentence:
I eat ice cream.
In this example, ‘I’ am the subject of the sentence because ‘I’ am carrying out the action of the verb (eating) and the ice cream is the object of the sentence.
(I know this is basic but I want to make sure we cover all bases.)
If you wanted to use an object pronoun in this sentence, you need to look for a word that can replace ‘ice cream’.
If someone asks you:
Do you like ice cream?
You could then respond and say:
Yes, I eat it every day.
In this case ‘it’ is the English object pronoun for ‘ice cream’.
Here are a few more examples in English:
— Have you seen my glasses?
— No, I haven’t seen them.
— Can you give this parcel to Sara and Lucas?
— Yes, I will give it to them tomorrow.
As you can see, the object pronouns in English are ‘it’, ‘them’, ‘him’ and ‘her’.
In the last example, I used a direct object pronoun (it) in combination with an indirect object pronoun (them).
Let’s discuss these two types of object pronouns further.
What are direct and indirect object pronouns?
In this section, I’m going to interchange the terms ‘object’ and ‘object pronoun’ a lot (just a heads up).
A direct object receives the action of the verb.
An indirect object is indirectly affected by the action of a verb.
‘Direct object pronouns’ and ‘indirect object pronouns’ are the words you use to replace the direct and indirect objects of a sentence.
To understand this concept, I found one idea that was particularly helpful for me.
The idea is that there are certain verbs that cannot use indirect objects. And, there are verbs that commonly use indirect objects.
For example, the verb ‘to see’ cannot have an indirect object.
Person 1: Can you see my book?
Person 2: Yes, I see it.
Note here that ‘it’ is the direct object pronoun for ‘book’.
But, most importantly, there cannot be an indirect object with ‘to see’ because when you ‘see’ something, the action of ‘seeing’ that thing does not affect anything else.
In contrast, the verb ‘to give’ often has an indirect object. For example:
Person 1: What did you give your mother for Christmas?
Person 2: I gave her a book.
In this example, the book is the direct object because it receives the action of the verb. And, ‘her’ is the indirect object pronoun because the mother is indirectly affected by the action of giving the book.
When you give, you generally give something to someone. And, if you know from context the thing being given and who is receiving it, then you can form a sentence with a direct and an indirect object pronoun like this:
I gave it to them last week.
This sentence translates really well to Spanish, let’s see how.
Spanish direct and indirect object pronouns
Here is a table of the Spanish direct and indirect object pronouns and their English equivalents:
| (Person) | English Object Pronouns | Spanish Direct Object Pronouns | Spanish Indirect Object Pronouns |
|---|---|---|---|
| (Yo) | Me | Me | Me |
| (Tú) | You | Te | Te |
| (Él / Ella) | Him / Her / It | Lo / La | Le |
| (Usted) | You (Formal) | Lo / La | Le |
| (Nosotros) | Us | Nos | Nos |
| (Vosotros) | You All | Os | Os |
| (Ellos / Ellas) | Them | Los / Las | Les |
| (Ustedes) | You All (Formal) | Los / Las | Les |
As you can see from the table, there is a big challenge you have to deal with.
When using direct and indirect object pronouns in Spanish, you have to decide between ‘lo‘ and ‘le‘ for the translation of ‘him’ and ‘it’, ‘la‘ and ‘le‘ for the translation of ‘her’ and ‘it’, and ‘los‘, ‘las‘ and ‘les‘ for the translation of ‘them’.
But, if you know the word you want to translate is a direct object pronoun or indirect object pronoun in English, then you will know which word to choose in Spanish.
This is why I spent so much time on the rules of object pronouns in English above.
If you want to translate an English sentence with the word ‘them’ to Spanish, and you know ‘them’ is an indirect object pronoun, then you need to choose ‘les‘.
If you want to translate an English sentence with ‘it’ to Spanish, and you know that ‘it’ is a direct object pronoun, and ‘it’ represents a male object, then you need to choose ‘lo‘.
That said, things are a little different with indirect object pronouns and verbs like gustar. You can read the article on verbs like gustar for more detail.
Next, let’s look at some examples of how to use these Spanish object pronouns, starting with direct object pronouns.
How to use Spanish direct object pronouns
Remember that in order to use a direct object pronoun, you need to know what the direct object is from context.
Let’s look at the example sentences from above.
English: Can you see my book?
Español: ¿Puedes ver mi libro?
English: Yes, I see it.
Español: Sí, lo veo.
In this example, you need to use ‘lo‘ because it is the direct object pronoun for ‘book’. And, since ‘book’ is masculine in Spanish, you need to use ‘lo‘ and not ‘la‘.
Also, importantly, you need to put the ‘lo‘ before the conjugated verb.
Note how the sentence order is different. It feels strange coming from English to put the direct object pronoun before the conjugated verb. But, this is something you’ll simply to have to get used to.
That said, if you have a ‘compound phrase‘ which is a conjugated verb followed by a verb in infinitive form, you can switch the order.
For example:
English: Yes, I can see it.
Español: Sí, lo puedo ver.
Español: Sí, puedo verlo.
Note that the ‘lo‘ can go before or after the compound phrase. Which is useful because the second sentence is much closer to English.
Here’s another example:
English: These boxes are very heavy, I can’t lift them.
Español: Estas cajas son muy pesadas, no puedo levantarlas.
Español: Estas cajas son muy pesadas, no las puedo levantar.
Next, some examples with indirect object pronouns.
How to use Spanish indirect object pronouns
As I mentioned earlier, in order to use an indirect object pronoun, you need a special kind of verb.
You need a verb that can indirectly affect other things by its action.
A few of these common verbs in Spanish are: alquilar, dar, decir, dejar, echar, regalar, and vender.
One thing to keep in mind is that these verbs don’t have to have an indirect object. It’s just that they commonly do.
For example:
English: Will you leave him the car?
Español: ¿Le dejas el coche?
Note the indirect object pronoun is ‘him’. The action of leaving the ‘car’ is indirectly affecting ‘him’ because now he can use the car.
Another example:
English: Did she tell you the story?
Español: ¿Te dijo la historia?
Here ‘you’ are the indirect object because you are indirectly affected by ‘her’ telling the story.
Here is another example:
English: I have rented my house to her.
Español: Le he alquilado mi casa (a ella).
Often you know from context who the person is so you don’t need the ‘a ella‘. But if it isn’t clear, or you need to make it explicit, you can demonstrate that the indirect object pronoun is male or female with ‘a él‘ and ‘a ella‘.
In this section, you have seen indirect object pronouns in isolation. Let’s now look at how to combine Spanish direct and indirect object pronouns in a sentence.
Spanish direct and indirect object pronouns combined
This next part is where a number of Spanish students get into trouble.
I want to add a caveat that if this is really challenging for you, just use the direct object instead of the direct object pronoun (just like in the previous section).
Note that the direct object pronoun and indirect object pronoun will often combine after a relevant question.
For example:
English: Did she tell you the story?
Español: ¿Te contó la historia?
English: Yes, she told it to me.
Español: Sí, me la contó.
Here the direct object pronoun ‘la‘ represents the story and the indirect object pronoun ‘me‘ represents the speaker.
Next, we have to look at what happens when you combine the third-person indirect object pronouns (le, les) with direct object pronouns (lo, la, los, las).
And, it turns out that we can’t actually say ‘le lo‘, instead, this becomes ‘se lo‘.
The explanation for this has to do with phonetic changes that originally occurred in Latin (illî illu → ge lo /ʒe lo/) that then transferred to Spanish with another further phonetic shift (/ʒe lo/ → /se lo/) that occurred in the 16th century.
That said, while it is technically a myth, another explanation that has arisen over the years is to say that ‘le lo‘ is actually harder to say. Try saying ‘le lo‘ three times fast, now try ‘se lo‘ three times fast.
It’s much easier to say ‘se lo‘ than ‘le lo‘. And, again, while this technically is not the real historical justification for the shift, it helped me personally to remember it, and it might help you too.
Here is a list of all of the changes for third-person indirect object pronouns combined with direct object pronouns:
Le lo → se lo
Le la → se la
Le los → se los
Le las → se las
Les lo → se lo
Les la → se la
Les los → se los
Les las → se las
Let’s look at these in action.
English: Will you leave him the car?
Español: ¿Le dejas el coche?
English: No, I won’t leave it for him because I need it.
Español: No, no se lo dejo porque lo necesito.
English: Did you rent your house to her?
Español: ¿Le has alquilado tu casa a ella?
English: Yes, I have rented it to her.
Español: Sí, se la he alquilado.
English: Have you thrown the tomatoes in the soup?
Español: ¿Le has echado los tomates a la sopa?
English: Yes, I have already thrown them in (it).
Español: Sí, ya se los he echado.
Also, if you have a compound phrase, you can change the location of the combined objects. For example:
English: Do you want to tell her what happened?
Español: ¿A ella le quieres decir lo que pasó?
English: Yes, I want to tell it to her.
Español: Sí, se lo quiero decir.
Español: Sí, quiero decírselo.
Note the small change you have to make with pronunciation when you move the object pronouns to the end. You have to put an accent on the last syllable of the verb.
As you can see, the best place to combine direct object pronouns and indirect object pronouns is after questions.
Despite these structures being a little tricky, there is good news.
The good news is that when these pronouns come up in your Spanish conversations, you will have some control over context.
For example, if you are talking with someone in Spanish and they ask you a question, you can choose to use a direct and indirect object pronoun or not.
Moreover, if you ask a native speaker a question and they answer with a combination of direct and indirect object pronouns, you will know from context because you asked the question.
How to avoid mistakes with indirect object pronouns and the preposition ‘a’
A common mistake we hear from students in our classes is leaving off the indirect object pronoun when it is required.
For example:
English: Have you given the gift to her?
Español: ¿Has dado el regalo a ella? ⊗
This isn’t right, you absolutely need the ‘le‘.
English: Have you given the gift to her?
Español: ¿Le has dado el regalo a ella?
Moreover, the ‘a ella‘ is optional, the ‘le‘ isn’t.
With normal Spanish subject pronouns (yo, tú, ella, él, etc.), you can drop them from your sentences because you’ll already know the person from the verb conjugation.
For example:
English: He wants it.
Español: Él lo quiere.
Español: Lo quiere.
You can drop the ‘él‘ because ‘quiere‘ tells you it is the third person. And, you probably know from context who you are talking about.
The ‘a él‘ and ‘a ella‘ behave in the same way.
English: I gave it to him.
Español: Se lo he dado a él.
Español: Se lo he dado.
The ‘le‘, or in this last example ‘se‘, is the necessary pronoun. The ‘a él‘ provides additional information if required.
Note you could also put the ‘a él‘ at the start:
English: I gave it to him.
Español: A él se lo he dado.
Thus, you can choose to put the ‘a él’ at the start, at the end, or leave it off completely. But you must remember the ‘le‘.
A few difficult verbs with object pronouns
The behaviour of the verbs in this section confuses both native speakers and students alike.
From time to time native speakers may use an unexpected pronoun with the verbs below. When this happens, this is known as leísmo, laísmo, or loísmo (I’ll cover this in more detail in the next section).
This list is by no means exhaustive for difficult verbs with object pronouns. I have just chosen a few of the high-frequency verbs in this category.
1. Escribir – to write
We tend to have a problem with this verb in English as well. When you say ‘I wrote him every day’, is ‘him’ a direct or indirect object pronoun?
As is the case in both Spanish and English, when you ‘write’ you are ‘writing something to someone’. Therefore, you need to use an indirect object for the person receiving the product of the writing.
English: I wrote her a letter.
Español: Le escribí una carta (a ella).
But, it is also perfectly fine to drop the object.
English: I wrote her every day.
Español: Le escribí todos los días.
You just need to keep in mind that when you drop the object, it is still there implicitly.
In addition, you can also say:
English: I wrote it.
Español: Lo escribí.
Where ‘lo‘ refers to the product of your writing, maybe you wrote ‘la carta‘ (the letter) or ‘el artículo‘ (the article).
2. Llamar – to call
Llamar is another verb you might hear with both types of object pronouns: ‘le llamo‘ and ‘lo llamo‘.
To cut a long and complicated story short, you should use the direct object pronouns ‘lo‘ and ‘la‘.
English: I called her on the telephone.
Español: La llamé por teléfono.
This also applies in the context of ‘calling someone a name’ or ‘calling out’ to get someone’s attention.
3. Molestar – to annoy
Molestar is also a challenging verb because, not only is it a Spanish false friend, but it can also use a direct or indirect object pronoun.
And, the decision of which pronoun to use depends on whether the subject of the sentence is an active agent of action.
In other words, is the subject actively annoying someone or passively annoying someone?
In the first case, you can say:
English: I don’t want to annoy her.
Español: No la quiero molestar.
Español: No quiero molestarla.
Here the sentence subject is a person that can physically act to annoy.
In contrast, the subject of the sentence could be something that can’t actively carry out a physical action. For example,
English: This song annoys him a lot.
Español: Le molesta mucho esta canción.
In this second case, ‘molestar‘ is acting like a verb like gustar. And, in this situation, the person receiving the action of the verb needs to be described with an indirect object pronoun.
4. Pegar – to hit
Pegar can mean ‘to stick’ or ‘to glue’. But, pegar can also mean ‘to hit’ or ‘to strike’ someone.
So, if you ‘hit someone’, should you use a direct or indirect object pronoun?
In Spanish, when you use pegar in the context of hitting someone, you actually need to use an indirect object.
English: I hit him.
Español: Le pego.
In contrast, if you use the verb golpear, which also means ‘to hit’, then you need a direct object.
English: I hit him.
Español: Lo golpeo.
As I mentioned earlier, the behaviour of verbs like these confuses both native speakers and students.
So, how can you remember how to use pegar and golpear with the right pronoun?
Fortunately, there is an English expression that could help here:
To stick it to him.
Or, a common version of this expression:
Stick it to the man!
Here, you are sticking a direct object ‘it’ to the indirect ‘man’. Coincidently, this works quite well with the Spanish verb pegar which also means ‘to stick’.
However, note that in Spanish the direct object is often omitted with this verb, as in the example above ‘le pego‘.
But it doesn’t have to be.
For example:
English: He hit him with two blows to finish the fight. (He hit two blows to him…)
Español: Le pegó dos bofetadas para terminar la lucha.
As you can see from the contrast of this example from ‘le pego‘, like the case with escribir, the object of the verb can be dropped but remains implicitly.
In addition, if you are actually using pegar to mean ‘to stick’, then you need to use a direct object pronoun as follows:
English: I stuck it to the wall.
Español: Lo pegué a la pared.
Because of the confusion caused by verbs such as pegar and golpear, natives could get it wrong. We’ll look at that next.
Leísmo, loísmo, laísmo — When a Spanish native might correct you
The terms leísmo, loísmo and laísmo refer to situations where Spanish natives use the opposite object pronoun to what is expected.
These uses are so prevalent, particularly in Spain, that they get their own name.
Moreover, due to how frequently these uses occur, they actually become accepted by the bodies that govern the use of the Spanish language such as the Real Academia Española.
What this means is that there could be a situation where you use the right object pronoun but a Spanish native actually tells you to use a different one.
Try not to get confused by this (which I know is hard)! Just note that there are potentially two accepted ways to use the pronoun.
For example:
English: I saw him near the park.
Español: Le vi por el parque (a él).
Typically, you would expect to hear ‘lo vi‘ (I saw him) in this sentence because the verb ‘ver‘ uses direct object pronouns. But, this instance of leísmo (where ‘le‘ is used instead of ‘lo‘) would now be considered acceptable due to its high use. Moreover, as is the case with normal indirect object pronouns, the sentence may need ‘a él‘ for clarity on the object of the sentence.
That said, it could be that the same speaker actually uses ‘la‘ for the feminine form.
English: I saw her by the park.
Español: La vi por el parque.
In this situation, you wouldn’t need ‘a ella‘ because it is clear from ‘la‘ that the object of the sentence is female.
In contrast, here is an example of laísmo, when you would expect ‘le‘ but get ‘la‘ instead:
English: …because she really likes to see us sweat in winter…
Español: …porque a ella la gusta mucho vernos sudar en invierno…
This use of a direct object pronoun in this example, of course, is quite irregular with the normal form being ‘le gusta‘.
This example comes from a book in a series for adolescents called ‘Manolito Gafotas’ (which I talk a little bit about here). It’s about a boy growing up on the streets of Madrid where you can sometimes hear this laísmo with gustar. As an aside, this book is the place where I first learnt about the concept of laísmo.
Your turn
Have object pronouns been a challenge for you?
The best thing to do is to start thinking about sentences in English with ‘him’, ‘her’, ‘it’, ‘them’ and asking yourself if they are acting as direct object pronouns or indirect object pronouns.
Then translate these sentences into Spanish.
As a reminder, these pronouns often come up when answering questions, so try to ask your Spanish friends lots of questions using verbs that use indirect objects (decir, dar, dejar etc.)
What sentences can you form with Spanish direct and indirect object pronouns?
Thank you so much for this post. Super helpful, I’m using pronouns a lot better now!
Thanks for your suggestion and your help Rebecca!! I’m so glad the article helped.
This was the best (and most thorough) article! I have been trying to get these pronouns straight for a couple of years now! I took my time going through the article and everything made a lot more sense after seeing your clear examples. Thanks so much for including the extra information about the verbs molestar, explicar & llamar, too! Just yesterday I was trying to figure them out.
In general, a great article. But I’m wondering if you’ve forgotten to correctly include the indirect object pronoun “le” in the sentence on Page 8 where you ask about throwing the tomatoes in the soup. Should it not read: ¿Le has echado los tomates a la sopa? Thanks.
Hola Michael, yes, absolutely! It is not technically compulsory but is very commonly used here. So, I have updated the article to reflect common use. ¡Gracias!
I am So so so thankful that you made this artical..It’s gonna make me pass my exams.. Please do an artical on imperatives too 🙏
Thanks for the kind words Lavanya and for the suggestion!
Thanks for the great explanation! It seems a lot clearer now : ) Keep up the good work! Becky
Thanks for the feedback Becky!! Saludos, Andrew.
This was super helpful. I took screen-shots of the two pronoun charts to study and practice offline.
Perfect!! Repetition is the foundation of all skill. Keep up the good work!
Great article, I’ve been struggling w/ direct and indirect for a while. This gave me some really good insight
Hola Kai, thanks for the comment! I’m glad the article helped you get some insight!
Very good article, it was nice to have an explanation of both Direct and Indirect pronouns and how they function together. Didn’t know about leísmo, loísmo and laísmo.
Thanks for the comment. I’m glad you enjoyed the article!
I have a textbook that says ” double use” of object pronoun and a + pronoun/noun in the same sequence is compulsory when the pronoun is the indirect object , ” Te voy a dar esto a ti” not “Te voy a dar esto”. But you say the ” a ti” is optional , or am I confused? Extremely valuable article for me especially if you could clear this up for me. Thank you so much. Nick
Hola Nick, yes I can confirm the “a ti” is optional in your example.
It would be interesting to take a close look at that textbook but it doesn’t sound right to me.
this helped me study for my test!! thank you so much
¡De nada Ella! I’m glad it helped!!
I am confused with the verb decir.
La dije I told her
Le dije I said to her
In English we can use the direct or indirect object pronoun and it means the same thing.
Hola Michele, it’s a great question! And, to answer the question, we need to start with the English debate “me” vs “I” vs “myself”. After years of confusion, in English, it is common to correct someone from “the gift is for my girlfriend and me” to “my girlfriend and I”, or for emails to be signed off with “please don’t hesitate to get in contact with myself”. When the rules aren’t clear to natives, it can be hard for students of the language. And, your question is a good example of this in Spanish (refer back to the section on “Leísmo, loísmo, laísmo”).
La dije – I said it (female “it”)
Le dije – I told her
So, we should always use “le” for “her” with “decir” but just as English natives use “me”, “myself” and “I” in ways that don’t agree with the grammar book, so do Spanish natives with “le” vs “la.
I often tell students not to worry too much about getting this wrong because it’s possible that Spanish natives won’t notice the mistake.
Hola-
Can you explain why we say ¨La miraba – I was looking at her¨
and ¨Le sonreía¨ I was smiling at her – ?
I´m trying to explain to students but I´m not sure why we do this!
Hola Carole, “sonreír” behaves purely as an intransitive verb, this means that it cannot have a direct object in the sentence. And this means we can’t use “la” or “lo” with “sonreír”. You can look up whether a verb is transitive or intransitive on the Real Academia Española (here is the entry for “sonreír” https://dle.rae.es/?w=sonre%C3%ADr). In contrast, “mirar” can be both transitive or intransitive depending on the context (https://dle.rae.es/?w=mirar). Sometimes our intuition doesn’t help from English because it sounds like “smiled at” and “looked at” should be the same. But, it can help to think of “to look at” as “to see” (e.g. I see her, I see him). And also to note we can’t do this with “smile” because we can’t “smile someone” or “smile something”.
I was reading today Mateo 17 and I came across “hincándosele” and “traédmele” which I find completely baffling. These seem to be cases where apparently there are two indirect objects …sele and …mele instead of indirect/direct such as …selo and …melo. Been looking around online and can’t find anything helpful.
Can you comment? Thanks, and thanks for the article.
Hola Theo, yes these two conjugations are quite strange. Can you find another translation of Mateo 17, I would be curious to know if these are used consistently or if they are unique to the version you are reading?
Hi there…thanks for getting back to me. That was a good idea to check another version. The traédmele of Mateo 17 verse 17 is rendered traéadmelo in the RV1960 version. (The version that I was reading originally is called the RV1602 Purificada.)
The other reference from verse 14 is not present in the alternate version due to using a different verb altogether. (“se arrodilló” is used in the 1960 version.)
Thanks for confirming your understanding of this to me…I’ll try to reach out to the publisher to find out the rational from them.
This is just why I got in touch with Real Fast Spanish! You just have a way of explaining things which absolutely makes sense to me Andrew, and I have spoken to friends and to my sons to try and get this le lo la idea into my head, to no avail….until NOW!! Thank you so much!
Thanks for the feedback, Jacqueline!! (note typos fixed 🙂 )
This is a really really good article. Thanks!
Great, I’m glad you liked it. Thanks for the comment Myers!
Incredibly helpful article! Thank you so much.
You’re welcome! Thanks for the comment Ariane!
The thing i am confused about is how could ‘me’ , ‘nos’ , ‘ te’ and ‘os’ be used as ‘direct objects’ ?
Whenever you have a verb that doesn’t take indirect objects, a good example is “ver” (to see), then we can use these pronouns as direct objects. For example:
– He can’t see us – No nos puede ver.
– I see you – Te veo.
– Can you see me? – ¿Me puedes ver?
Other examples include “loving someone” (e.g. Te quiero (I love you) / nos aman (they love us) etc.)
Can you explain how you would say “Venda los libros a Roberto.”? Would you say “vendaselos”?
Yes, that’s correct! Just need to be careful with the accent on the first “e” to maintain the emphasis: “Véndaselos”.
Thank you!
Good article brother. Very useful. Your posts are really helpful and to the point. I also like the way you write, it looks like you are talking to us. Love from India. Salud!
Thanks Jimmy! 🙂
how the phrase can be written using the appropriate direct and indirect object pronouns for the identified words in parentheses.
Quiero comprár_______. (a mi hija, una guitarra)
Hola Bhushan, you try first, what do you think the answer could be?
It would be helpful to add usted and ustedes to the chart. Do they act like el and ella and ellos and ellas as objects? Thanks!
Yes, they do. Great suggestion Melissa! We have added the “usted” and “ustedes” forms to the chart.
Thanks Andrew!
Thank you! this is very helpful
Thanks for the feedback Lara!
Is le used with muerde?
Ella le muerde a su amiga.
She bites her friend.
If so, then why is the DOP used with querer/amar? Isn’t her friend indirectly receiving the action of the love like she does the bite?
Ella la quiere.
She loves her friend.
Thank you!
Hola Elena, there is a lot to cover with your question. To start, “she bites her friend” -> “muerde a su amigo”. Instead, if it was “she bites her” then it would “la muerde”. But, if it was “she bites him” then you may hear both “lo muerde” or “le muerde”. Check out the section on leísmo because while the grammar book says one thing, it’s possible to hear natives saying something different.
I’ve been struggling with this so much! It’s hard to do well in your spanish class if you haven’t covered the grammar in English yet… I think I’ll do a lot better on my exam now!
Thanks Anna, I’m glad it helped. 🙂
Can you help in my class lol
Maybe Timothy, it’s hard to say 🙂
Indirect objects often answer the questions “To whom?” or “For whom?”. I understand why the IOPN would be included with practically any “to” sentence. Le doy el regalo a Marisol, for example. But, I find that in “para” sentences, the IOPN is often left out. I’ve searched high and low and read advanced and basic grammar textbooks and looked up explanations until I’m blue in the face, and I can’t find anything that even comes close to helping me understand why sometimes it is used with the “para” sentences and sometimes not. Since I struggle to understand this, I haven’t been able to find a good way to explain it to my own advanced students.
Esta toalla es para Sam.
Or, the kitchen is dirty and I want to help. Yo le lavo los platos para mi madre. It feels as if I hear sentences like that often excluding the IOPN and just including the “para mi madre”.
Ernesto le compra los chocolates para su novia. Or “a” su novia? I have a textbook that says “a” but I don’t understand that, either. 🙁
I’m struggling to put my question into words. Thanks!
Thanks Carri, yes, this is a tricky one and it’s always good to have a few good examples to try to break the topic down. In general, “le” and “a” will usually go together. When we have “para” then we often have an additional object in the sentence and that noun ends up being the ‘object of a prepositional phrase’ rather than the indirect object of the verb. That’s why we won’t typically find “le” and “para” as a combination for the indirect object of a sentence.
Hi, umm, I have a doubt, so while using the verb molestar, so “I annoy her` = “la irrito” but “the heat annoys her” = “le molesta el calor”. The word on which action is being done is the direct obj. pronoun, but in the calor sentence, the girl gets irritated, so shouldn’t it be “el calor la molesta” (la = her)
Hola Seol, you’ve got the right answer in there (le molesta el calor)! 🙂 Check out our article on verbs like gustar, it should help answer your question.
Hi Andrew – another brilliant article – thanks. Just one question – I would have used “le” naturally for “le vi por el parque” as I thought that you would have to use “a” with “ver” for a person (e.g. Vi a mi amigo por el parque – where the additional “a” makes me think that in terms of surface structure at least (although not in the deep structure), mi amigo takes the form of an indirect object) – or am I getting confused?!!
Many thanks
Andrew
Hola Andrew, yes, this is a tricky topic!! The “a” in “veo a mi amigo” is known as the “personal A” in Spanish and it isn’t related to indirect objects. Check out our article on the personal A for more examples.
I finally finally understand this! This is such a thorough explanation. I cannot thank you enough.
Thanks Keisha, I’m glad to hear you understand it now!! 🙂
Another question along the lines of Carri’s question, Nov 30, 2021:
“I am going to help Ana clean the house.”
I have seen both versions:
“Voy a ayudarle a Ana a limpiar la casa”. AND: “Voy a ayudarla a Ana limpiar la casa.”
Is there a grammatically correct answer even if either version is being used? Intuitively, I would use the direct object pronoun with the verb ‘ayudar’.
I’d appreciate your input. Thanks in advance.
Hola Thomas, in this case, if you include “Ana” in the sentence, the most common option would be to drop the pronoun:
– I am going to help Ana clean the house -> Voy a ayudar a Ana a limpiar la casa.
Hi! Thank you for the article.
Same question about using “Le” IOP or “Lo/La” for the verb AYUDAR. For example:
“Cómo puedo ayudarle?”
Why do we use the IOP here if they will receive the “help”?
Thanks!
Hola Stephanie, we will likely see both “lo” and “le” used with the verb “ayudar” depending on the region. Check out the section in the article on “leísmo”. The verb “ayudar” is a prime candidate for leísmo.
Hola, sincerely thanks for the article. I’m still a little bit confused the verb “molestar”. The thing is that I can’t distinguish the first and second example above. Why isn’t the song an active agent of the action or why does the song passively annoy him. I’ve read the article “verb like gustar”, but I’m still really confused. Please help me!
Hola Angél, I mention at the start of that section that “molestar” is a tricky verb! Rather than try to understand “why” it is the way it is, try to practice using the patterns in the article and replacing the nouns accordingly (The song annoys him – Le molesta la canción, The movie annoys him – Le molesta la película, His work annoys him – Le molesta su trabajo etc.)
Thank you a lot Andrew. I will practice more and enhance my espanol. From Việt Nam with love!
Thanks Angél! 😊
G’day from Melbourne! Great article, thank you. I have seen elsewhere an example that i’m confused about, and hope that you might be able to clarify. The example was the response to this question – “Compartiste el secreto con tu madre?” (ie “did you share the secret with your mum?”) The response was given as “Si, se lo comparti”. I’m trying to understand why an IOP was used in the response for the “con tu madre” part, rather than “con ella”. I’ve seen that IOP’s are typically used to identify “FOR who/what” and “TO who/what”, but haven’t til now seen them used for “WITH who/what”. Would Spanish speakers typically use an IOP in that scenario, or would they use “con ella”? And if they used “con ella”, would the IOP “se” still need to be included anyway as the sentence does have an indirect object (mum). Gracias – me duele la cabeza!
G’day Andrew! 😊 If we focus on English for a moment and pick a verb like “consult”, we could find the following “Have you consulted with your mum yet?” and in response “yes, I have consulted her”. So, just like in English, we can find verbs in Spanish where the preposition “con” (with) may be optional. I would suggest that this is what is happening here with “compartir” but this may not be a pattern that we can assume will always occur.
Very informative. I’m a little bit closer to understanding it all! One small point: In the UK we don’t say “I wrote her every day.” but rather “I wrote to her every day.” I don’t think this helps us Brits to understand this example!
Thanks Peter, I’m glad you enjoyed the article! 🙂 I always try to find examples from English that can explain something in Spanish, but if this doesn’t work for you (and all of the UK), you’ll have to learn it the usual way.
B’dia de nuevo de Melbourne! Duolingo wanted me to translate this sentence – ‘He told you that the coffee had sugar, and you didn’t believe him’. My translation (and pardon the absence of tildes) was ‘Te dijo que el cafe tenia azucar, y tu no lo creiste’ – but Duolingo wanted ‘no LE creiste’ instead of ‘no LO creiste’. Is there anything specific to the verb CREER that would cause the LE to be used rather than LO in this sentence (maybe in the same way that DECIR would take LE rather than LO), or is something else at play here (eg LEISMO, formal DO pronoun, distinguishing ‘him’ from ‘it’ etc)? By way of comparison, I’m pretty sure something like ‘You didn’t SEE him’ using the verb VER would translate as ‘no LO viste’, rather than ‘no LE viste’. Any ideas appreciated as I can’t find a clear answer anywhere!
Hola Andrew, this is a bit specific to the verb “creer” where something unique is happening. It is similar to “decir” but not the same. In English, we can say “I believe it” or “I believe him”, which in Spanish could both potentially translate to “lo creo”. To avoid this problem, the language allows “le creo” for “I believe him”. In other words, both “lo creo” and “le creo” are possible translations for “I believe him” which separate this verb from “decir” which can only be “le digo” for “I tell him”. This is not technically leísmo since there is no strong historical grammatical pattern that is being used differently by a subset of natives, both options have been historically possible. It’s a tricky example!