Goin' Indirect

Last week, I covered direct object pronouns. If you remember, these were shorter, smaller words that referenced a noun that the verb was referring to in the sentence. Like "the cat grabbed the string." The string would be the direct object because it is receiving the action by the cat with the verb.

Today, I want to talk about indirect object pronouns. Again, this is the same as a direct object pronoun with a slight difference. To make it indirect, you are referring to a person or animal that affects or is affected by that direct object. Take the following example:

¿Quién regala María el coche? Ella lo regala el coche. (or... Ella se lo regala.)

Who does Mary give the car to? She gives him the car (or... She gives it to him.

I want you to notice a couple of things with the above example. First, lo refers to who Mary gave the car to -- him. The car is the direct object that the verb "gives" refers to. After the "or," lo refers to the car by using the word "it." The second thing I want you to notice is the order in which the direct and indirect objects are located in the very last sentence. The indirect goes first followed by the direct second. When the direct object is a lo/la, you have to change lo to se to keep from sounding like you're singing some sort of Christmas carol.

Here's a quick chart to show you all of the indirect object pronouns along with the direct object pronouns and where the verb could be:

Person	Singular	Plural
to me/to us	Me	Nos
to you/to you all	Te	Os
to him/to her/to you/to it	Le (Se)	Les (Se)

 

This should be enough for right now. I don't want to overload you with pronouns. Feel free to ask questions in the comments section or email me at SpanishMyWay@hotmail.com. I would be happy to answer your questions or even answer them through an up-coming weekly post. ¡Hasta luego!

Are You Direct Enough?

Let's move on to a little more about grammar. If you are a newbie with Spanish and have been following my blog, we've covered a lot of ground in these few precious months. It's time to go a little further and deeper. Today I'm going to talk about direct object pronouns.

Now don't get scared away. These pronouns are really quite simple to use and even easier to understand. The purpose of having them is so that you do not have to keep referring to the object time after time. It simplifies things greatly. Take these sentences as a good example:

Mi mamá hace el pastel tan rico. Lo como mucho.

My mom makes the most delicious dessert. I eat it a lot.

The direct object is the noun (a person, place or thing) that the verb "directly" refers to. In the above example, that would be the dessert (el pastel). My mom makes that noun (the dessert). So the verb directly refers to it.

So I don't have to keep saying "the dessert" in all of my sentences after referring to it, a direct object pronoun let's me replace the noun with something smaller and shorter to say. In this case, Lo (it) is the word used in my second sentence. Notice it is a shorter and smaller word and thus, faster and easier to say and use.

In Spanish, the direct object pronoun agrees with the noun it replaces both in gender and in number. All nouns have gender unlike in English. But like English, we can change a noun (usually by adding an -s to the end of the word) to make it plural. Spanish is the same way. So in our example above, Lo is singular and masculine to refer to "the dessert" which is singular and masculine in Spanish.

The final aspect I would like to point out to you is where the pronoun is placed in the Spanish sentence. Look at the example above again. Notice it comes before the verb (como) and not after it like we do in English. Typically you will find pronouns appear before the conjugated verb. Sometimes, you will find it tacked on the end of an infinitive verb i.e. comer (to eat). It would look like this:  comerlo.

Here's a handy chart to give you the singular and plural forms for both masculine and feminine of direct object pronouns:

Person	Singular	Plural
Me/Us	Me	Nos
You/Them	Te	Os
Her/Him/You/Them	Lo/La	Los/Las

I hope this has helped a bit. Feel free to comment or ask questions below or send me an email to SpanishMyWay@hotmail.com. I would love to hear from you. ¡Hasta luego!