Vemos que aquí sin un guía nos resulta bastante complicada la cosa.

Question

What does "nos" mean in this sentence? Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

Anyway, what I don't know is what the un is doing there...we would not use an article here.

See, that proves it. They wanted us to know that we weren't talking about a book :-) - 0074b507, SEP 6, 2009

I'm puzzled. Why wouldn't one put the un there? Do you typically leave off articles after sin? - webdunce, SEP 6, 2009

Answer 2

another comment: as I understand it, the guide has to be a male person since it is masculine in our sentence. If it were feminine it could be either a female guide or a guide book.

Guia is indeed masculine here. But webdunce's translation is correct. The subject of the sentence is "la cosa". Hmmm, probably you are referring to the first part? Can a guide not be a person?

I wasn't saying that his translation was wrong, just mentioning that the guide had to be a person since it was masculine, that we weren't discussing a guide book. - 0074b507, SEP 6, 2009

I had translated it exactly as he did, but he beat me to posting it so I just added comments instead. (I used rather where he used quite) I was surpised that we both translated resultar as turned out to be. - 0074b507, SEP 6, 2009

I cheated; I looked up resultar and saw it meant "to turn out to be." - webdunce, SEP 6, 2009

A guide can be a book. - webdunce, SEP 6, 2009

Answer 3

just to comment further:

The "nos" is an indirect object pronoun inside of the subordinate noun clause: that here....

another comment: as I understand it, the guide has to be a male person since it is masculine in our sentence. If it were feminine it could be either a female guide or a guide book.

Good point about the guide: I was thinking of a guide book when I translated the sentence. - webdunce, SEP 6, 2009

Answer 4

nos = us (used as an indirect object in this sentence, I believe)

I'll give a stab at translating that sentence as well: "We see that here, without a guide, the thing turns out to be quite complicated for us."