Indirect Object Pronouns Confusion
Indirect Object Pronouns le = him/her/it/you formal
Estoy/ escribiendo / a Teresa
(I) am /writing/ to Teresa
Le/ estoy / escribiendo To her/ (I) am / writing = I am writing to her
....so far it makes logical sense to me,then I read this translation on a Spanish language learning website
La familia pobre le dió a Pedro un regalo. The poor family gave Peter a gift.
I have tried to roughly translate it -
La familia pobre - The family poor - The poor family dió - gave (dar) a Pedro - to Pedro un regalo - a gift
le??? - why is le floating around in that sentence,I can't make sense as to why le pops up in illogical places in sentence sometimes.
2 Answers
It´s an area where Spanish differs a bit from English.
The ´le´ means TO him-her-it-you(formal) and is absolutely required. The ´a Pedro´ part clarifies TO WHOM the gift is going (common in Spanish, since ´le´ can ambiguously mean him-her-it-you)
The important part is not to make the common mistake, of keeping the redundant ´a Pedro´ and throwing out the required ´le´.
The ´le´ is absolutely required. The ´a Pedro´ is not.
It´s just the way they do it.
Note further where the ´le´ in the sentence comes. Before any other pronouns (because it´s an indirect object pronoun) and Before the conjugated word. It pretty much has to be there.
Also, see http://www.spanishdict.com/topics/show/17
Right, it is redundant usage.
It would be like saying:
We gave to him the gift to robert.
It makes no sense in English but in Spanish that is the right way.
