No la/No lo
Hello everyone, I wanted to know what are the meanings of No la and No lo.
I thought it is for Female and Male but then I saw 2 sentences:
" Él quiere un pastel pero no lo necesita"
"Él necesita esta medicina pero no la quiere tomar"
So...why is it "no la" in sentence 2?
Gracias !
1 Answer
You need to figure something out now before it gets out of hand.
No is an adjective/adverb/modifier or, simply put, a describer for both thingies and actions.
Lo/La is a pronoun/direct pronoun or, bluntly put, a thingy.
You can either choose to read the stuff below for a semi-detailed explanation, or skip to the TLDR at the end for a short answer with no explanations.
'No' has a variety of uses in Spanish, many of which correspond with uses in English (such as the 'replying No', which you use to express negation when asked a whether/if question). However, 'No' in Spanish is equally often used for negating verbs (it is the replacement of 'not' in English, for the most part) and, to a lesser extent, adjectives.
Examples of No in action:
"Sé." -> I know. Here, the knowledge is a bit generalized. You aren't exactly stating what you know.
"No sé." -> I don't know. Again, your ignorance is generalized.
"No como esto." I don't eat this. Pretty clear this time what you don't eat.
La/Lo, as previously mentioned, are pronouns or thingies. They are the direct object pronouns, to use the grammatical term, which correspond roughly to the English 'he' and 'she'. Except in Spanish, every noun has a gender, so lo and la can refer to neuter objects as well (as a quick recap, being pronouns, they spend their lives representing nouns anyway).
How do you know which to use? The gender of the noun they represent will determine which to use. If you were saying "I love it" where 'it' is an ice-cream (el helado in Spanish), you would use 'lo' to represent it. If you loved, say, your pillow (la almohada in Spanish), you would use 'la'.
So where do these handy pronouns go? Like, how would you actually go about saying "I love it"? Unlike in English, the direct object pronouns get hooked -
1) To the beginning of the conjugated verbs (the verbs that you modify so they don't end with -ar, -er or -ir, like 'toma' from tomar meaning to take)
2) To the end of non-conjugated verbsor infinitives (the forms that end with -ar, -er or -ir)
3) To the end of the imperative form of verbs in the positive informal command (such as "Take it" spoken informally. "Don't take it" is a negative command that does not count).
So this is all find and dandy, but we really need to see this action, so here goes:
Examples of DOP in action:
"Lo quiero." I love him/it. 'It' is a bit vague, but will presumably be understandable from context. Note that this is 1) above, where 'quiero' is conjugated so lo is attached to the beginning of the verb.
"Tengo un helado sensible. Lo quiero." I have a sentient ice-cream. I love him. Here, the first sentence provides the context. This is basically an extension of the above.
"Quiero tomarlo." I want to take him/it. This is a case of 2) above, where the DOP (direct object pronoun i.e lo or la) is attached to the end of the verb.
"Esto es mi hermana. La quiero mucho." This is my sister. I love her very much. Note the usage of 'la' in place of 'lo' since the noun represented is feminine.
"Tomalo." Take it. The informal second person positive command. See how the DOP os hooked on to the end?
"No lo toma." Don't take it. The negative command does not follow the above rule.
[TLDR]
No and lo are separate bits in the first sentence. Without 'lo', the sentence says:
"Él quiere un pastel pero no necesita"
= He wants a cake but doesn't need (?)
This sentence is missing a DOP to complete it, so we have to add 'lo' or 'la' to the verb's beginning. Since pastel is a masculine noun, we use 'lo'.
"Él quiere un pastel pero no lo necesita"
= He wants a cake but doesn't need it.
Again, no and la are separate bits in the second sentence too. Without 'la', the sentence says:
"Él necesita esta medicina pero no quiere tomar"
= He needs the medicine but does not want to take (?)
This sentence is missing a DOP to complete it, so we have to add 'lo' or 'la' to the verb's beginning. Since medicina is a feminine noun, we use 'la'.
"Él necesita esta medicina pero no la quiere tomar"
= He needs the medicine but does not want to take it
Note: You could rewrite the second sentence a bit and shift the la in this way if you want to:
"Él necesita esta medicina pero no quiere tomarla"
= He needs the medicine but does not want to take it.
We just moved the 'la' to the second verb. Essentially, the difference is the difference between saying "but does not want it to be taken" and "but does not want to take it". In English, there is an obviously superior choice, but in Spanish, both sentences are exactly equivalent and you are free to write whichever version you feel more comfortable using.
