Use of "me" vs "a mi" and similar terms (te, le, les, etc)
I'm working my way thru Rosetta Stone. It's fine for the basics, but fairly useless when it comes to more complex usage. (How the program developers expect a bunch of pictures to adequately explain nuanced grammar rules remains an open question. But that is a question for a different forum.)
For several lessons now, I've been stymied by the use of me, te, le, les. Each time I thought I deduced the rule, it turned out not to b the case. And now "a mi" has been thrown into the mix. Have tried a number of translation sites, but they return either gibberish or identical translations no matter what variations I plug in.
A prev thread on this site (about yo tambien and a mi tambien) partially clarified the issue, but not enough. So here are samples of the problem and the corresponding questions:
Le gustaria a usted ir a la montana Me gustaria jugar al futbol A mi me gustaria ir a la playa
- What is the "le" in first phrase? (And an explanation of the "a" preceding usted would also help.)
- How does the use of "me" in phrase 2 differ from using "yo". (One of those cases where translation sites produce the same answer for both.)
- And what's up with the "a mi plus me" in phrase 3? This construction has not previously come up at all.
A long list of questions. Any help will be appreciated.
2 Answers
Your questions deal with gustar- there are a number of verbs that work this way- but we will just discuss gustar to simpfly a very lengthy and complex topic.
In English we use gustar to refer to liking something
Me gusta nadar. I like to swim.
But in Spanish it really is more like "is pleasing to"
Me gusta nadar. To me is pleasing to swim. Swimming is pleasing to me.
The English verb disgust works like that. That disgusts me. I hate that. With disgust, like the related spanish gustar and disgustar, you are the object, not the subject. You like things, they do not like you, but things disgust you, you do not disgust them (well not normally).
So the subject of gustar is always what is pleasing.
In gustar, frequently the subject follows the verb- a word order that is OVS not the classic English VSO.
Le gustaría a usted ir a la montaña=== to you would be pleasing to you to go to the mountain. In Spanish, if you have an indirect object, it is common to use a pronoun in addition to the object if it is named- something called a redundant pronoun. It is absolutely required if the indirect object precedes the verb.
So "le" in essence tells us that an indirect object "a usted" is going to follow. In Spanish they like to do this with indirect objects, in English we do it with subjects- it is good to go to the store. What is that it- Why not just say to go to the store is good. It is just a difference between the languages * it is somewhat difficult for Spanish speakers to understand why we put an "it" in there. They do not need a subject pronoun place holder like we do, but unlike us, they do like an indirect object one.
Me gustaria jugar al futbol- simple with the above- To me would be pleasing to play (at) football.
A mí me gustaría ir a la playa. To me (me) would be pleasing to go to the beach.
The A mí adds a little emphasis- to me as opposed to whoever else we are talking about. The me is required- the "a mí" is not- it means the same without it, just less emphasis that it is me that likes going to the beach as opposed to everyone else.
Now if you say "A Juan le gusta" it just indicates that le refers to juan, but a él le gusta adds emphasis, as it adds no information. You might ask why you cannot just say "a Juan gusta" but you could ask why you can't say "is raining" in English- you have to say "it is raining". And I am not sure there what the "it" that is raining even is.
Hopefully that gets you a little closer. Sorry for rambling a bit.
The key is to learn how to express a general concept, which can generally be expressed in a number of different ways in either language, most naturally in each language, ie in the most usual way, rather than using a word for word translation of one languare to the other, that can create something that is understandable, but just sounds a bit foreign.
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