lo que o los que?

Question

te diré lo que son = I'll tell you what they are

Why not 'los que son'?!

Answer 1

Im with Rogspax here.

Why I personally don't think los que is right in this case is because the addition of "los que" to me sounds like "I'll tell you who they are." The speaker here is trying to relay "I'll tell you what they are."

I'm not 100% sure, I'm interested to find out the reasoning behind this.

The What (a characteristic) vs Who (which in plural Would require los) makes a lot of sense. I bet you nailed it. - rogspax, Feb 20, 2013

Answer 2

This little sentence is out of any context; however, the relative pronoun los (or las) que would have to have the antecedent stated just before this sentence so that "los" would be refering back to a specific masculine plural noun. Given the context the neuter relative pronoun, lo que seems appropriate. I'm getting this from having just read about pronouns on this site in the grammar section.

Rog and Brady, good answers.

Answer 3

We´re just starting these in class, and I´m trying to sort that out systematically too. There Do seem to be places where one would expect the plural and they stick with lo or la. A couple have involved collective nouns, but not all, so I´m having trouble too. I´m mostly chiming in here instead of commenting above, because the system will track my questions (thus making this easy to find) but not comments. A bit more context couldn´t hurt either though.

Thanks for asking it at any rate, as I´m about to reread that in our book, as soon as I get caught up on paperwork.

Good question.