Indirect Object in Poem

Question

I am trying to analyze the following sentence I came across in a poem and in particular why there is a "le" in front. The sentence is:

"le escondes al mundo lo que puedes dar"

I translated the sentence as:

You hide what you can give to the world

The indirect object phrase is "to the world" and therefore the "le" is anticipating the indirect object phrase much in the same way it would for:

"Tú le escondes las galletas a él"

I guess used to the indirect object being a "he/she/you formal" and I don't know if it can work for "the world". I was hoping someone could tell me if my thinking is correct and if not why there is a "le" in front.

Your analysis sound quite good to me. :) - bosquederoble, Oct 13, 2015

Answer 1

For Linjen

The world will hide what you can give

No

I think if you want to reference the world as an indirect object you need to use the pronoun "lo"

Lo is the masculine direct object pronoun, le is the indirect object pronoun:

**

le escondes al mundo lo que puedes dar

**

from it you hide from the world that which you can give.

You hide from the world that which you can give.

Essentially the same as the sentence that Tangos8 wrote, just a different word order.

If the world was doing the hiding it would be conjugated third person.

The world will hide what you can give= el mundo esconderá lo que puedes dar.

I still think the analysis by the original questioner is good.

Answer 2

I translated the sentence as "The world will hide what you can give". The second sentence I think translates as "You hide the cookies for (from?) him."

I think if you want to reference the world as an indirect object you need to use the pronoun "lo".

I'm just a newbie here, so I very possibly may be wrong.