'A ella le gusta leer'

Question

So, to follow up, 'A ella le gusta leer' would mean directly 'To her it is pleasing to read.'

Does the 'le' in that instance mean 'it' or 'her'? I know 'ella' means her but I guess if 'le' meant 'her' in this case the direct translation would be like:

'To her it is pleasing her to read.'

Also, I understand that in phrases like "juegan al fútbol" you change it from 'el fútbol' to 'al fútbol' but does that mean 'play to the soccer'? or is the DIRECT English translation different than that or is it just one of those Spanish grammatical rules that make no sense in English just like a lot of English grammatical rules probably make no sense in Spanish. You know... is there a reason behind the madness?

Ps questions move around in the list so your 'question below' won't always be right 'below' :) - Kiwi-Girl, Oct 31, 2010

Answer 1

Hi there, I just put a comment on your other post but the 'le' here means 'to her' - the 'it' is included in the 'gusta'.

le=to her / gusta=it is pleasing / leer: to read

The sports thing as far as I know is just a rule:

jugar+a+article+sport (thanx M )

the rule would be jugar+a+article+sport or game ===> jugar a las cartas - mediterrunio, Oct 31, 2010

ah true, that's the one lol :) - Kiwi-Girl, Oct 31, 2010

Answer 2

The reason that "a ella" is added before "le" is because "le" is used for both males and females and you need to specify whether it is he or she you are referring to. If you don't understand indirect objects, hopefully this link will help: http://spanish.speak7.com/spanish_direct_indirect_object.htm (Sorry, the link kind of has an annoying advertisement at first, but it's a really good article).

"A" following jugar is an idiom. Make sure you know that "al" is a contraction of "a" and "el" though, meaning "to the". "Al isn't a word by itself.

Hope it helps!

Answer 3

The le part of the sentence is the third person pronoun, like A mi me gusta, me being first person, A ti te gusta, te being second person and so on.