Le, la, lo

Question

I teach in a school dealing with Hispanic Parents and the mixture of backgrounds is diverse ( Mexcio, Honduras, El Savador, Guatemala) and the parents use the same phrases with thie children over and over again but use them differently. Is this a cultural difference or grammatical difference? For example:

When they are wanting thier chidlren to "put a toy down", on set of parents will say "pongale", the others will say " pongalo", or even "pongala"...its seems the la, le, lo is used so differently that I find myself memorizing which parents use which! Is that culturally correct? Or is it grammatically different each time?

Answer 1

I can see why this is confusing. In this case, e "le, lo, and la" are pronouns referring to whatever it is that the child is putting down. If it is a doll, (muñeca), the reference pronoun would be feminine, or "la". Masculine items would use "lo". If they were putting down another child, perhaps, they would use the pronoun for "him", or "le". If you are interested, you canfind more on this page: http://www.spanishdict.com/topics/show/15

thanks, that does make quite a bit of sense now that I think back over the situations. Yes, i'll check out the link! - LucyDog111, Apr 16, 2012