Confundida sobre pronombres

Question

I just want to know whether le and les are equal to lo and los. Lo siento, estoy confundida. And how do I ask this in Spanish. Is it "¿"le y les" son tantos como "lo y los"?"

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Rocoso I think you did a great job explaining it all very well, I just would like to add a couple of things. First, let me remind you that in the Spanish sentence: "Yo pegué al niño" "al niño" is an Indirect Object. "al" is short for "a+el" and "a" is a preposition. Think of this sentence: Yo pegué un golpe al niño. Here, "un golpe" is the Direct Object and "al niño" is the Indirect Object, the one who receives the Direct Object as you said in your post. So in the sentence: Yo pegué al niño. The DO has been omitted, maybe because it is not relevant in the conversation, and you can (approximately) work it out, it could be "una patada, un golpe, una bofetada..."

Second: in spoken Spanish "le" and "lo" are not interchangeable (they are just like in written Spanish) but the thing is that in some regions of Spain or Latin America, some people speak using one of these forms and seldom the other, (which is incorrect). In Madrid for example you can find some people who tend to use "lo/la/los/las..." even for IOs, that's called "LOÍSMO". In the region where I live it's the other way around, my grandmother speaks using "le/les..." too often. That's called "LEÍSMO". Children are taught not to make these mistakes in school.

Although, I had not thought about "al niño" being an IO. Though it certianly is, as you pointed out! I had always been taught this example was a DO. Oh well. - Rocoso, Mar 15, 2013

RE: your second point. I meant to refer to leismo by saying they are interchangable, because, for all intents and purposes, they "appear" interchangable. I simply have chosen to simply my explanation in this regard to avoid unnecessary confusion. Cont. - Rocoso, Mar 15, 2013

Thank you so much for your time. It is really helpful. - 00a50c57, Mar 16, 2013

Answer 2

"Le" y "les" tienen la misma relación entre sí tanto como tienen "lo" y "los" siempre tomando en cuenta que "lo" también se usa para indicar neutro género y "le" no.

Creo que con esto puedes facilmente formar la pregunta.

I forgot to mention, and as Rocoso said " Lo/Los are direct object pronouns and Le/Les are indirect object pronouns.

Thank you Julian for your help. This is a great forum. - 00a50c57, Mar 16, 2013

Answer 3

Great grammar question! First off, in SPOKEN Spanish, sometimes people will use them interchangeably, but the are NOT the same. Also, don't worry about if you are getting confused on these, it will come naturally with time, but understanding the fine details is always good, too!

To ask if they are the same in Spanish, you could say something like "¿Son iguales 'le' y 'lo'?

Here's a more detailed answer of the differences for you: Lo/Los are DIRECT OBJECT PRONOUNS while Le/Les are INDIRECT OBJECT PRONOUNS.

If you're like: and what the Hell is a DOP or IDOP, then read the rest of this post, otherwise you have your answer!

Here's the explanation of the grammar!

Ok, so as you may already know from your Spanish classes, le/les and lo/los are known as "Object Pronouns". Now, thanks to the state of the American Public Education System, most people have know idea what such things are by the time they graduate high school! But, I digress... I'm here to hopefully make your understanding of these "Object pronouns" much simpler!

Ok, so when someone is talking about a "Grammatical Object" they are talking about the thing which 'receives the action of the verb' in some way shape or form. There are two types of grammatical objects in English and Spanish: direct objects and indirect objects. With me so far?

Let's start by talking about what a "direct object" or "DO" for short is in English! DO's are those things which directly receive the action of a verb. Here's some examples in English with explanations: "I hit the boy"; in this sentence, "the boy" is the DO because he received the action of "hitting". Ask this question: "What was hit?" -> "The BOY was hit". Make sense? Here's another. "I drank the soda"; here, 'the soda' is the DO because it received the action of the verb. Ask this question: "What was drunk?" -> "The SODA was drunk". Still with me?

Now, what about all this stuff with the pronouns though? Ok, so Object pronouns exist in English, too! "Him/Her/It" are all object pronouns in English! For example, we could replace "The boy" from example 1 with "Him". "I hit the boy" becomes "I hit him". Understand?

Ok, so now DO's also exist in Spanish! Here's an example: "Yo pegué al niño." What was hit? The "Niño" was hit. Got the picture? Now, let's say you wanted to use one of your direct object pronouns to replace the words "al niño". We could say "Yo lo pegué", which is literally "I hit him". We just used the Direct Object Pronoun (DOP) to replace the subject in the original sentence, just like we used 'him' to replace 'the boy' in the English sentence. Keep in mind though, in Spanish (as well as in English), you have to make sure your DOP's MATCH GENDER and NUMBER (if they are third person DOP's). For feminine words, use 'la/las'.

So, all the DOP's for Spanish are: (singular DOPs) Me, Te, Lo/La, (Plural DOPs) Nos, Os (if you like Peninsular Spanish) and Los/Las.

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Ok, now on to Indirect Objects (IO's).

IO's also exist in both Spanish and English. An IO is the thing which receives the DO!

Here are some IO examples in English. "I gave the boy the soda". Ask yourself this: what was given? Was the boy given, or was the soda given? The SODA was given, therefore it is the DO, and then ask this question: who was the soda given to? The soda, which is the DO, was given to the boy, who is the IO. Understand?

In English, we often (but not always) tell what the IO is because we use words like "to, unto, for, with, etc." before the IO. You could also word the example above like this to make it more clear: "I gave the soda TO the boy". This more clearly identifies the boy as the IO.

Now, English also has Indirect Object Pronouns (IDOP's), which are the exact same as the (DOP's) in English. "I gave the soda to the boy" -> "I gave the soda to him" -> "I gave it to him". Following me so far?

Spanish has IO's too, just like English. "Yo le* di al niño la bebida" which would translate to "I gave the drink to the boy". Again, the drink was given, so it is the DO, and the drink, which is the DO, was given to the boy, who is the IO.

Now, IDOP's also exist in Spanish in the forms of "le/les" for the 3rd person. These IDOPs only have to match in number, not gender, unlike their DOP cousins. Let's work with the Spanish IDOPs a little. The previous example could be written like this using IDOPs: "Yo le di la bebida", which would mean "I gave him/her/it the drink." Understand? Now, you could write this using both IDOPs and DOPs, but I'll leave that for another time.

Something that used to confuse me a lot with IDOPs is that they appear in what seem like weird places sometimes. You'll often find IDOPs with verbs of speaking/thinking/writing/etc. "Yo le hablé ayer" means "I spoke TO him/her/it yesterday." "Yo les escribiré mañana" means "I will write TO them (whether they're men, women or things is unknown) tomorrow."

All the IDOPs in Spanish are as follows: (Singular) Me/Te/Le (plural) Nos/Os/Les.

I hope this helps, and if you have an questions/doubts/need for further explanation, don't hesitate to PM me. I love teaching this kind of stuff!

Wow! Thank you so, so much for taking the time to explain this. It is such a help. - 00a50c57, Mar 16, 2013