Yo tengo una lata. Yo se la paso a Dalila. What does the " Yo se" mean in the second sentence?

Question

I guess the sentences are "I have a can." and "I gave it to Dalila." in English. I am confused by the "se" following "Yo."

Answer 1

In the second sentence, la is a direct object pronoun (DOP ) that replaces the same gender object noun in the first sentence: la lata. Normally, indirect object pronouns are le and les. Here, Dalila is the indirect object, so she is singular person and would be represented by le, which is true for both females and males. So the second sentence would technically be:

Yo le la paso a Dalila.

Here "le" is clarified by "a Dalila", i.e. "le" refers to the indirect object "Dalila". But, in Spanish, the preference is to get rid of the sequences of words that all start with the same first letter, i.e. they don't want "le la" because of the two letters "l", so the "le" (or "les" if a plural direct object) is replaced by "se".

Yo se la paso a Dalila.

Se still refers to Dalila, however, just like "le" would have.

BTW, at least you did not say dar la lata, which colloquially means "to bother"

• Hi xocoyote. With explanations like that why does your profile say "Beginner" in Spanish. - Eddy Feb 22, 2012
• Because, like many people who are newbies to Spanish, reading and writing are easy, but listening comprehension and speaking are hard. - xocoyote Feb 22, 2012
• The reason listening is hard is because unlike reading, it is a linear, one-way process: I can't see all the individual words or phrases that people speak, and I can't go back and listen again or edit to whom I am listening (unless I record them). - xocoyote Feb 22, 2012

Answer 2

I pass it to her