Tercera persona pronombres
Please can you help me with this question:
Completa las siguientes frases con lo,la,los,las,le,les
Nuestro robot hace cosas extrañas:
se enfadó y __ rompió la antena a mi coche
The answer is le but I don't understand why.
1 Answer
The reason it is "le" is that "le" refers to the car. The sentence means:
Our robot does strange things: he got mad and broke the car's antenna.
In Spanish, it's possible and common, instead of using the possessive as is natural in English (see above translation), to use the possessor of the direct object (the antenna is the direct object in this case, and the car is the possessor) as the indirect object, which requires that you use the indirect object pronoun in addition to the optional noun.
Other examples of this:
El hombre me rompió el brazo (a mí). The man broke my arm.
El buscón les roba el dinero (a las personas ricas). The pickpocket steals people's money.
Los soldados nos trataron de quitar/ trataron de quitarnos la vida. The soldiers tried to kill us (lit. to take our lives).
