When to use ... Direct object in Sentences...

Question

Can someone tell me why some sentence are led by their indicative "object".. I guess whie others are not... Can you tell me why Nosotros estamos muy lejos. is incorrect and why Quieres comer is incorrect.

Answer 1

Why do you say that "Nosotros estamos muy lejos" and "¿Quieres comer?" are incorrect?.

Both are totally correct. Maybe I am not understanding your question.

PD: A Spanish native speaker used to omit pronoums (as subject) in all sentences but use them it is not incorrect.

Edited: Well, I want to clarify this question, but I will write about how Spanish people use or not the subject (This is not "official" grammar):

The subject is only omitted when:

1) It is a pronoum and the conditions are the same that in (2): Yó, tú, él, nosotros, vosotros, ellos.

2) When both (speaker and listener/s) know about who are they talking about. Probably they have to say the subject (name, nick or any) the first time they talk about somebody, but after that:

Example:

Man 1: ¿Que te parece Juan? What do you think about Juan?

Man 2: Es un poco tonto (omitted) He is stupid

Man 1: ¿Por que crees que es tonto? (omitted) Why do you think that Juan is stupid?

Man 2: Por que dice tonterias (omitted) Because he say stupid things.

It is also common that in a long conversation talking about the same person his/her name appears more than once. You must practice and listen Spanish speakers to get it. For me, as a native Spanish speakers, was hard to get used to include the subject when i talked/wrote in English.

BUT: As another user has written in this post, sometimes when you want to emphasize the subject for any reason, you do not omit it.

I'm glad you said that, I was staring at these examples and not understanding anything at all. - annierats, Feb 3, 2015

Answer 2

Nosotros hemos ganado la partida. - the pronoun is used for emphasis or when it's not clear who does the thing. Disadvantages when you're not after emphasis or clarity: it takes longer to say and people suspect you're a foreigner.

Hemos ganado la partida. - the pronoun is omitted when it's clear who does the thing. Advantages: it's shorter and more common. The disadvantages: if you're a foreigner and can't remember which verb ending corresponds to which pronoun, life gets interesting.

Answer 3

Ok... Well I perceived that they were... incorrect..... I just did not know...When to add or not add the object in front in the form...Nosotros hemos ganado la partida or just Hemos ganado la partida... I am trying to understand the "Why" each cases are used and maybe the advantages of each.

You don't need to use them, they are understood from the verb. But if you want to stress that it was 'we' that won, you can put it in. It makes it sound as if it was surprising that we won. - annierats, Feb 3, 2015

Answer 4

Subject noun = Person or thing 'doing the verb' (the 'actor' performing the 'action', its 'driver' (these are not formal grammatical terms, by the way)). So it goes for active sentences in any event (let's not worry about passives here).

Subject pronoun = Pronoun 'standing' in for subject noun. In English these include: I, you, he, she, it, we & they, for all of which Spanish has equivalents (& then some more, e.g. 'you' can be expressed as: tu, usted, vosotros or ustedes).

Direct object pronoun = Pronoun 'standing in' for direct object noun, i.e. the 'primary or direct recipient' of the action being performed by the subject. In English these include: me, you, him, her, it, us & them, for all of which Spanish has equivalents (& again some more).

For example: I hit you: I = Subject (doing the hitting); You = Direct object (being hit).

Indirect object pronoun = Pronoun 'standing in' for indirect object noun, also a recipient of the action being performed by the subject, but not directly and only in consequence of the action being performed primarily or directly in respect of the direct object. In English these are identical to the direct object pronouns, but usually introduced with a preposition, like 'to'. In Spanish, unlike English, but like many other languages, the indirect object pronouns are not identical to the direct object pronouns (some are some of the time, while others are different, & there are idiosyncrasies like: conmigo, contigo & se).

For example: I give it to you: I = Subject (doing the giving); It = Direct Object (being given); (to) You = Indirect Object (you are not the thing being given over, only its ultimate beneficiary).

The only example of a pronoun that you give in your question is 'nosotros' which, in this context, is a subject pronoun equivalent to 'we' in English.

In Spanish often subject pronouns are redundant because the person or thing doing the verb (the 'actor' performing the 'action') is already apparent from the verb ending, in this case '-mos'. So I would say, you could use it or not in this context. Including it is unnecessary, but not wrong, and you might include it for emphasis or effect.

'Quieres comer' is also not incorrect, I believe, 'quieres' being the conjugation for the subject pronoun 'tu', thus I know it means 'you want to eat'.