Using the pronoun "les"
In the following sentence does "les" make the phrase "a los niños" redundant?
Èl les está enseñando español a los niños.
If "a los niños" is dropped would this still be a proper sentence?
Èl les está enseñando español.
3 Answers
@Eddy - the sentence was the caption below a picture of a man in a classroom full of kids. In this context it was obvious who he was teaching and that's why I was curious about the apparent duplicity of "les" and "a los niños".
@lazarus - thanks for the feedback, I will try to provide more context next time.
No, it is not redundant. It is not 100% necessary either, but it is not redundant. The explanation? Believe me, it would put you to sleep and it would take you weeks, if not months to assimilate all the theoretical garbage that it is needed to analyse it, and even after that, regardless of how well you can explain it from a theoretical point of view, you would not be able to use it well... because you are not a native. Learn through context. Don't try to understand isolated sentences. Do not try to find the English equivalent, because there is no equivalent in every single grammatical issue where students of Spanish struggle. You will never be fluent by translating or finding equivalents in Spanish.
And for a question like this, if you want it to be meaningful, provide a full context and ask things like "Which one would you say?" These nuances cannot be explained in detailed so that they are useful.
You can omit "a los niños" providing it´s clear that it´s the children you are talking about. After all, he could be teaching Spanish to all sorts of groups.
