se le te

Question

The lesson has Hola, yo soy María, encantada de conocerte. Ok the te means you. and This is informal. I thought it would be conocerse is talking to someone formally. My teacher said le. So I want to find more information about this. What kind of words are the te and le Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Goospanish:

I agree with your teacher, conocerse would not be correct in this situation.

Te and le are indirect object pronouns. me, te, le, nos, les

Conocer can take direct pronouns: me, te, lo, la, nos, los, las

However, particularly in Spain, they often substitute le for lo when the person is a male. So, in this case, "le" is really masquerading as a direct object.

Some Spanish speakers substitute le for lo and la, the lo for a male and the la for a female. This is sometimes done for politeness reasons, as in your sentence above. (since lo and la can refer to "it" in some cases.) ... I guess in Spain people don't like to be referred to as an "it" anymore than we do.

This is done very often with polite social exchanges such as "It is nice to meet you", "How can I help you?" , "What can I serve you?" or "What would you like to drink." In each of these cases "le" is being used to refer to "usted" , not tú. With the first two sentences "you" is a direct object with "le" being substituted for lo or la. (by some Spanish speakers) With the second two sentences, an indirect object is required so there is no substitution happening, but for politeness, le is used instead of te.

The above substitutions are known as leísmo, which is just a fancy grammar word for using "le" a lot instead of the "correct" direct pronoun. In fact, this is so prevalent, that the RAE (the Spanish grammar police) now allows le for lo for a male person.

As you appear to be a beginning Spanish student, some of the above may confuse you.

I recommend that you go to our main menu, click on Language Guide, then click on Pronouns and read the articles on direct pronouns, indirect pronouns and reflexive pronouns. Reading those articles will help you to understand se, te and le and much more.

Regarding se, this can get more complicated. There are many, many ways "se" can be used in Spanish. I will explain two of them.

Se is often a reflexive pronoun, but it must also be used in any sentence which contains both an direct object of (lo, la, los or las) and an indirect object of (le or les).

I gave the book to Juan.

(Yo) di el libro a Juan.

Le lo di. Wrong, Le and Lo cannot appear together.

I gave it to him.

Se lo di. Correct, se substitutes for le or les to avoid le lo, le la, etc.

I gave it to him.

Back to conocerse....

Juan se conoce.

I'm not sure if this would ever actually be said, but if it were said it would mean:

John knows himself, or Juan is very familiar with himself.
Here you can see "se" being used as a reflexive pronoun for the 3rd person singular.

You are right, Dilken. "Lo" can be used instead of "le" as a direct object if it is male. I forgot to mention that. - DonBigoteDeLaLancha, Jul 21, 2017

Answer 2

I found this video about it. He is funny and being funny helps to learn. Now I know what the topic Thank you very much DilKen and Don https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcjGv4aiHoU

Im slowly getting Spanish. Not easy for me.

Nice to meet you..... the you is direct object right?

Yes, since there is no action or exchange between the 1st person and the 2nd person it is a direct object. - DilKen, Jul 21, 2017

In "I gave you a book" or "I told you a story" book and story are direct objects and you is an indirect object. - DilKen, Jul 21, 2017

In "I saw him" there is nothing in between either, so him is a direct object. However, as I explained in my answer, some Spanish speakers will use le instead of lo. (Le vi instead of lo vi.) - DilKen, Jul 21, 2017

"le" in that case, Dilken, is used mostly in Spain. - DonBigoteDeLaLancha, Jul 21, 2017

Goos, I checked out the video. The host is good, put I don't like his pronunciation of "te" and "le" by themselves. - DonBigoteDeLaLancha, Jul 21, 2017

DonBigote: Yes, that is my understanding. Even there I think it is regional. Isn't Madrid one of the places where leísmo is most prevalent? - DilKen, Jul 21, 2017

Don: re the pronunciation, I agree, the me, le, and te are horrible. But even our SD grammar article on vowel pronunciation says e is pronounced as eh in English. Not anywhere I know of in the U.S. - DilKen, Jul 21, 2017

I think the Spanish e normally sounds much more like the English long A but short and without the diphthong to the long E. - DilKen, Jul 21, 2017

And, contrary to what many say, I can hear a lot of variation in the e sound depending mostly on what consonant follows it. - DilKen, Jul 21, 2017

Answer 3

Goos, it would be correct to say, "...encantada de conocerle", which is a more formal way (think of "usted") of saying "you". "Le" as a direct object pronoun also means, "he/she/it". "Le" is replaced by "se" if it is an indirect object prounoun. It has nothing to so with the reflexive "se" (llamarse, ponerse, quitarse, acostarse, etc.).

"I gave it to him/her."="Se lo dí." In this case "se" is "le", but it's not correct to say "le lo di." It sounds like a song.

"Dáselo tú"="Gve it to him/her"." This is the "tú" form.

"Déselo usted.="Give it to him/her." This is the "usted" form.

"Dálelo" or "Délelo" would not be correct.

I felt what she said was correct. So le here is direct object pronoun.... I don´t know how to do questions marks on this computer. - goospanish, Jul 21, 2017

Try Alt-168 if you have a PC. - DonBigoteDeLaLancha, Jul 21, 2017

I have resorted to copy past. - goospanish, Jul 21, 2017

goo: are you talking about ¿ or ? For Spanish typing I recommend the U.S. - International Keyboard. You can search google for how to make it work on your computer. - DilKen, Jul 21, 2017