Indirect Object Pronoun "les"

Question

Buenos dias.

I'm working through the "write" section of 2.3 which asks you to make each sentence shorter by using direct and indirect object pronouns.

My question relates to shortening this sentence - "José les tira las serpentinas a ellos."

So my understanding is... the direct object pronoun is las and the indirect object pronoun is les. This would make the sentence "José les las tira."

As we know ( ), we should change that to "José ses las tira", due to consecutive L's. However, the answer is "José se las tira" (dropped 's'), which I agree is far more palatable.

So in a nutshell, my question is...

When do you drop the 's' off the end of the indirect object pronoun "les"?

Cheers

Rob.

Sorry for the essay

Answer 1

The 3rd person indirect object pronouns le or les is changed to se when preceded by lo, la, las, los 3rd person direct object pronouns.

No, we don't know. There is no word ses, so there is no dropping of an "s" from ses.

You never drop the "s" off les. Le is the 3rd person, singular, indirect object pronoun and les is the 3rd person, plural, indirect object pronoun

If dropping the "s" off things is some kind of memory trick for you, then fine. To me your viewpoint of these pronouns only makes understanding them even more difficult. I hope that you don't have trouble remembering when dropping letters is a mind game and when it is reality, because Spanish has some instances where letters actually are dropped (forming the 1st person, plural command with pronominal verbs and forming 2nd person, plural, informal commands with pronominal verbs.)

Answer 2

HI rob, to practice rewriting pronouns I created this set some time ago, I hope you find it useful.

rewriting pronouns, Spanish only

I will definitely have a look... maybe if I drop by España we could go through it. Or you could swing past Sydney? - robwall84, Oct 19, 2009

Hi. I don't know if you're still around, but thanks for creating those flashcards. They're great practice. - PeterRS, Nov 7, 2012

Answer 3

Thanks qfreed.

The word 'ses' didn't seem correct. Everything you've said makes sense and is what I expected, however the video didn't highlight this case.

At the moment there's not a whole lot in this language that makes sense to me - in fact your last two lines above mean nothing to me! For now any memory trick or rule I can apply to help is great - you have to start somewhere!

And by "preceded" I guess you mean "followed"?

Cheers

Rob.

Sorry, yes, you are correct. I meant "followed". It sometimes makes less sense and sometimes more sense when you start to learn all the exceptions to these basic rules. - 0074b507, Oct 19, 2009