To make someone happy
Just as a follow on from someone elses question to make happydo you need the object pronoun in this kind of sentence:
Le haces a Maria feliz. You make Maria happy.
or is it optional, or is it incorrect?
I was wondering because in the thread above we were having a conversation about why 'le dije a mi mamá' would just be weird without the 'le' but Loa felt that it was superfluous in 'le haces feliz a ......'
Gracias de antemano por sus comentarios 
12 Answers
It's wrong. It would be:
"La haces feliz" or "Haces feliz a Maria" (change "a Maria" to "la" and you've got the other sentence i put before).
PD: "gracias de antemano por sus pensamientos" I don't understand why you use "pensamiento"
Cisneros is correct. i just wanted to add: someone got corrected just a few days ago for that same use of "pensamientos".
As Heidita pointed out, if what you mean is "thanks for your thoughts" in English, you can't use the same literal expression in Spanish. You need to say something like: " Gracias por sus comentarios", or "Gracias por sus ideas".
The easy answer is that "hacer feliz" is transitive, and takes a direct object. In hacer feliz a alguien, a is not the preposition a but the personal a. That's why hacer feliz will require a direct object pronoun from among lo, la, los, and las. The person who is being made happy is the direct object of "hacer feliz."
In "le dije a mi mamá", le, an indirect object, refers to mi mamá. The direct object here will be the thing that you told your mother, which could be referred to as lo but was not included, perhaps because the object is implied based on context.
I'm probably too late, but there we go anyway:
If "hacer" is used with another verb to mean make someone do something, please refer to the guidelines that Kiwi quoted from the DPD: if the second verb is transitive, "le" is generally used, but when it is intransitive, "lo/la" is more common.
If there is no second verb, if you do or make something, that is your direct object. However, if you make someone or something end up in a particular way (e.g. make someone happy), the person or thing is the direct object again, and the result you hope to achieve is another type of object called "predicativo" in Spanish, which in this case should agree with the direct object. See the previous thread provided by qfreed for more information.
Thus, sentences like "Lo hice desdichado" and "Las hice desdichadas" are the preferred options for this construction, like cisneros already said. "Hice feliz a María" is also a perfect sentence, but "Le hice feliz a María" is unacceptable in educated Spanish.
Normally there are no indirect objects in these constructions, although some "dativos" can be used in colloquial Spanish (e.g. "Házmela feliz", where that "me" means "for me", as in "Make her happy for me"). These datives differ from the indirect objects in the fact that they must always be pronouns and they do not accept reduplication, like indirect objects often do (e.g. Le - a él)
I was wondering because in the thread above we were having a conversation about why 'le dije a mi mamá' would just be weird without the 'le' but Loa felt that it was superfluous in 'le haces feliz a ......'
That is a different verb and construction: "Decir algo [direct object] a alguien [indirect object]". The indirect object in this verb is likely to be reduplicated.
Anyone remember this thread from last week where hacer and complemento predicativo were discussed?
However, that analysis is flawed. In "Los hace [algo]", that "[algo]" is not an object, or at least, not a direct or indirect one, but one which you probably have never heard before, called "(complemento) predicativo". Direct and indirect objects do not agree with other parts of the sentence, but this kind of complement (just to avoid the term object) agrees with either the subject and the verb, or the direct object, which is what happens here.
Hope somebody will answer this! If not I'll start a new thread.
Always at your service
If I were to say "le haces feliz a Maria" instead of "la haces feliz a Maria", would this be acceptable as being 'leísmo', or would it be absolutely and utterly unacceptable?
Hmmm, we need an expert here, but I think this is indirect object, so it would be le, using la would be laísmo.
What does "Si le hace feliz", mean in english? This question goes uncorrected by native speakers.
If it makes her happy.....yes, this is correct.
A Dios le hace feliz que tú seas feliz. from a native speaker's blog page'.
Well, taking it this way, and not the other way round, Le hace feliz a Dios que....somehow it is a question of *sounding* right .
¿LE HACE FELIZ LA DEMOCRACIA? from FP en Español.
This is different, the duplicate object is not mentioned, democracia is the subject here.
(Please call lazarus to this thread )
You can say: Le haces felíz a María. Haces felíz a maría Le dije a mamá Yo le dije a mamá
Anymore on this??
I'd put my money on needing it, MC. To me it sounds really weird to say only "Haces feliz a Maria."
Hope somebody will answer this! If not I'll start a new thread.
If I were to say "le haces feliz a Maria" instead of "la haces feliz a Maria", would this be acceptable as being 'leísmo', or would it be absolutely and utterly unacceptable?
Tell you why, because on Googling it I find some results like these:
What does "Si le hace feliz", mean in english? This question goes uncorrected by native speakers.
A Dios le hace feliz que tú seas feliz. from a native speaker's blog page'.
Ya se que nada le hace feliz, ya se que... from another blog.
¿LE HACE FELIZ LA DEMOCRACIA? from FP en Español.
It's very difficult for me too MC and I'm always looking for examples to try to drum it into my head. I think I know the theory, but in practice I often have to ask myself if the verb is taking a Direct or Indirect Object, and as you see, I can easily get it wrong.
Ok here's a bit more I have found on the subject that I found particularly helpful: hacer a alguien feliz
Del DPD Tanto hacer como dejar tienden a construirse con complemento directo si el verbo subordinado es intransitivo: «Él la hizo bajar a su estudio y le mostró el cuadro» (Aguilera Caricia [Méx. 1983]); «Lo dejé hablar» (Azuela Tamaño [Méx. 1973]); y tienden a construirse con complemento indirecto cuando el segundo verbo es transitivo: «Alguien lo ayudó a incorporarse, lo estimuló y hasta le hizo tomar café» (JmnzEmán Tramas [Ven. 1991]); «El alcaide de la cárcel le dejaba tocar el banjo todas las mañanas» (Cela Cristo [Esp. 1988]).
and this from the same link:
Hola!
I'm going to start with explaining the difference between direct & indirect objects (I know this is an unusual way to explain it but it really makes sense to me).
A direct object answers the question * "what?" for the verb. For example, in the sentence "Give the book to him," you would ask, "give what?" Give the book. Therefore "the book" is a direct object, and you'd use a direct object pronoun (lo) to replace it. "Da el libro a él" => * "Dalo a él."
An indirect object does not answer the question "what?" Using the same example ("give the book to him"), the part "to him" does not answer the question "what", so it is an indirect object, & you'd use the indirect object pronoun (le) to replace it. "Da el libro a él" => "Dale el libro."
"Leísmo" refers to the fact that many native speakers (I've been told) always use "le(s)" when referring to people, regardless of whether the person is grammatically a direct or indirect object in the sentence. I'm not a native Spanish speaker, so I'm not positive about this, but my Spanish professor & my textbooks have said that leísmo is pretty much standard in Spain (not sure about in Latin America).
So ... let's use all this to answer your questions. "El libro era famoso. El evento de ese año lo hizo más famoso aún." This is correct, because the book is a direct object. You know that because you can ask the question "what?" about the verb (what did it make more famous?) and the answer is the book. You cannot use "le" instead of "lo" in this case, however, since there is no person involved (the book is an thing, not a person), and leísmo applies only when the direct or indirect object is a person.
Your next example: " Él estaba triste. Su novia lo hizo feliz? ¿Le hizo feliz?" In this case, both possibilities can be used. I would use the first one, "lo", because the person here is functioning as a direct object. Again, you can check this by asking the question "what?": (what did she make happy? him.) However, it would also be acceptable to use "le" here due to leísmo.
I hope this was helpful & answered your questions!
PS. This thread might help you too: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=750828
- (PS I think the dalo - in the first quote, should be daselo and I'll add the comment below from Q that a direct object can answer the question what or who)
Could it be thought of as the 'la' equals the state that is caused? The happiness? Than it is the direct object....you are making the happiness?
