using "enseñar"

Question

My sentence is:

"Ella les está enseñando chino a las niñas."

My literal translation is:

"She is teaching them Chinese to the girls." (sounds very awkward)

I know it should say:

"She is teaching Chinese to the girls." or simply "She is teaching them Chinese"

I don't understand the use of "les" in this instance. Could some explain this to me?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The "les" is a redundant indirect object pronoun in this case. It's used to reinforce involvement, advantage, loss, etc. If it were left out, it would depersonalize the indirect object somewhat.

So it defines "les" when we don't know who the indirect object is,correct? - shad0whuntr, Sep 14, 2009

OK, I found what I was looking for- prepostional phrases (a las ninas) are often added to remove ambiguity. - shad0whuntr, Sep 16, 2009

Answer 2

In spanish the use of indirect object pronoun is mandatory whenever the clause has an indirect object ,, it may sound little funny that u can omit the indirdct object if u wish, to shorten your sentence but the indirect object pronoun can't be omitted ,,

For example ,, a ellos les gusta mi perro. ( here ellos is the indirect object) so if I want I can remove the indirect object ELLOS and say les gusta mi perro.. but I cant remove les as that is mendatory per Spanish grammar rules .. yes it does sound reduntant but it is important .

Dont try to translate literally ,, every language has it's osn logic which may not be completely compatible with the structure of other languages.

I am not too sure about the exact logical rationale behind this grammar rule ,, but is a way to reinforce the indirdct object ..