Would you check this for me?

Question

The followIng are a couple answers that I have come up for a exercise that I am working on. The point is to form sentences from a set of words that are given and to use nosotras commands. The story line is that our grandparents' anniversary is approaching and we are discussing what we are going to do for them. I would appreciate any input you can give me on these.

Sorprendámoslos; preparemos sus platos favoritos. I think this is close, if not correct. Is the accent on sorprender right and is the use of el punto y coma apropiado?

Vamos a comprémosles flores. No les los demos chocolates. I came up with this answer from some notes that I took in class but it does not seem right to me. It does not seem that the direct object pronoun should be used with the direct object 'chocolates'.

Answer 1

Sorprendámoslos; preparemos sus platos favoritos.

This doesn´t work because you´re using present subjunctive. Nosotros has no imperative conjugation, so we have to say it with other formations, ie: "¡A sorprenderles pues!" or "Vamos a sorprenderles" or "Hay que sorprenderles". The second clause is OK

Even though we say things like "vámonos", "fuímonos", "comámonos", "andámonos", etc, these are not proper words. We use these conjugations in a playful manner because everyone knows they don´t really exist, although "vámonos" has been accepted as normal usage.

Vamos a comprémosles flores. No les los demos chocolates.

We just conjugate the first verb before the infinitive, so it should be "Vamos a comprarles flores."

The second clause again should not use present subjunctive of dar. "No se los damos chocolates" ("se" here is the plural personal pronoun) or "No les damos chocolates."

If you want to use subjunctive, then you can say something like "No quiero que les demos chocolates."

Thank you Julian. I appreciate the help. - kirk1, Mar 31, 2013

Interesting. Of those ´improper´ words, I´d only been exposed to vámonos. Thanks for the extras. - rogspax, Apr 1, 2013

Answer 2

The 1st person plural imperative certainly does exist where the endings are the same as the present subjunctive for both positive and negative commands. This is not surprising since a command is an earnest wish forcefully expressed. For example:

"Empecemos" "Let's get started" / "Bailemos toda la noche" "Let's dance all night"

"OK, no nos enfademos" "OK, let's not get angry"

In Spain, this is often expressed by "ir + a" or just by "a" plus the infinitive. For example:

"Let's see" "vamos a ver" or just "a ver"

"Let's find out" "Vamos a informarnos" instead of the awkward "informémonos"

As always, the accent mark maintains the intended stress where pronouns are attached to the end of verb forms.