Leísmo, the term?
¿Cuál es el significado del término entrar (leísmo) en español? What is the meaning of the term (leísmo) in Spanish? Thankyou.
3 Answers
I found this
Vio a un hombre / Lo vio (She saw a man / she saw him) – This is your standard Spanish, where lo replaces un hombre as the direct object. The same sentence when spoken casually in parts of Spain, becomes le vio, where le takes on the role of a direct object instead of lo when the entity in question is a male person, in our example, a man. This usage is now allowed by Spanish grammar.
Vio un anillo / Lo vio (She saw a ring / she saw it) – Again, the masculine ring is referenced in the direct object form by the word, lo. However, despite being masculine, a ring is not a person and hence, cannot take a le as the man in our previous example did.
But I would not worry about it too much.
It is very simple:
As it is very hard even for the Spanish to know when to say lo or le, replacing a person, they have taken to saying 'le' all the time,or nearly all the time. It makes life easier but is , strictly not grammatically correct.
Example: Le vi por la calle.. ( I saw him in the street)
This tendency to replace 'lo' with 'le' is called ' leísm'.
En español pues:
leísmo.
m. Gram. Empleo de la forma le y, con menos frecuencia les, de él en el acusativo masculino singular o plural cuando el pronombre representa a personas.
m. Gram. Incorrección consistente en emplear la forma le o les para el acusativo masculino singular o plural cuando el pronombre no se refiere a personas, o para el acusativo femenino singular o plural.
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