Why is there a "le" in the sentence? What is it for?
Hello! I'm absolutely new to Spanish and I've just been teaching myself for about one and half months. Today, while I was reading the text on my book I saw these sentences, I don't understand, and I need some explanation! Gracias!!
- Al mediodía, comenzó a sentirse indispuesto: le dolía la cabeza, tenía la nariz tapada y perdió el apetito.
- Su madre le tocó la frente y le dijó que tenía fiebre.
In the two sentences above, why are there the "le"s that I highlighted? The head hurt, shouldn't it just be dolía la cabeza? And touch the forehead, shouldn't it just be tocó la frente?
Explanations are absolutely appreciated!
3 Answers
I'll give you a couple more examples of the use of the indirect object.
From the SD dictionary:
Me da igual lo que piense la gente.
I don't care what people think.
If we transform this to he / she / or usted it becomes:
Le da igual lo que piense la gente.
He / she doesn't care what people think.
You (usted) don't care what people think.
And, as the following example shows, "le" does not always represent a person.
Alexa le dio un puntapié a la pelota hacia Estefanía para que pudiera anotar un gol.
Alexa kicked the ball to Estefanía so she could score a goal.
So, what is the "le" in the above sentence? It's the ball!
Isn't Spanish fun? 
P.S. Dar (to give) is used in Spanish in many, many ways, and is one of the verbs that often requires the use of an indirect pronoun representing the person or thing that "something is given to." There are several other verbs such as poner (to put in, to place, etc.) which often are used in ways that unexpected indirect object pronouns show up. (unexpected in the minds of us English speakers)
By the way, as you continue studying and reading, you will often see indirect pronouns that you don't recognize as such, because only le and les are distinguishable from their direct pronoun and reflexive pronoun counterparts. Often when you seed a me, te, nos or os in front of a verb it will be an indirect pronoun. If the conjugated verb agrees with the pronoun then the verb is likely to be reflexive or reciprocal, but if the conjugation doesn't agree it will be an indirect or direct pronoun, and you can't tell the difference with me, te, nos or os unless you understand the requirements of the verb being used. Just being aware of this phenomena will help you to learn. Don't give up, all this will become clear if you stick with it.
1 Al mediodía, comenzó a sentirse indispuesto: le dolía la cabeza, tenía la nariz tapada y perdió el apetito.
2 Su madre le tocó la frente y le dijo que tenía fiebre.
This is a very typical way for things to be expressed in Spanish.
Instead of "my head hurts" you say "le duele la cabeza" - literally the head was hurting (to/on) him/her. The use of the indirect object indicates that he/she is the affected party. I put the (to/on) because it is not a direct object- the head did not hurt him, instead it hurt and he was the one affected.
The second is similar- le tocó la frente- she touched the forehead on him/her. Again, with body parts it is more usual to not use a possessive, but indicate that by use of the indirect object. So she touched his/her forehead.
This is just a difference between the way things are expressed in each of the languages and it needs to be practiced and learned.
You may have seen, for example:
Me cepillo las los dientes, I brush my teeth (I brush the teeth on me). Not cepillo mis dientes.
You just have to learn to do things that way to sound natural. Or you will sound as funny in Spanish as someone saying I brush the teeth on me instead of I brush my teeth does in English.
Hi astro, welcome !!
This is an excellent post, but a rather complicated matter.
This "le" is the indirect object of the sentence.
Look, this would be it with the object: La madre (le) tocó la frente a su hijo .
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