¿Puedes ponerle agua a mi rosal? .. indirect obj pronoun
This example is from episode 3 of the Spanish learning series @extra. Anna is asking Pablo to put water in her flowers.
¿Puedes ponerle agua a mi rosal?
Please review my understanding...
you (subject) can put (verb) le (indirect object pronoun - for 'mi rosal') agua (direct object)
Question 1) Are any of the following placements of 'le' also correct? I am guessing the first is OK but the second is not...
Le puedes poner agua a mi rosal Puedes le poner agua a mi rosal
Question 2) What happens when we get rid of "a mi rosal".
"Puedes ponerle agua"
Which roughly translates to "can you put it water"... When we say this in English, we would normally say "Can you put water on it?" or "Can you put water in it?" We would include the prepositions "on" or "in". But in Spanish, this doesn't seem to be done. Does it ever create confusion? As a native English speaker, it seems like such an important part of the meaning. Do Spanish speakers ever include the prepositions when only indirect object pronouns are used? Or in that case would they just include objects themselves.
Thanks!
2 Answers
Le puedes poner agua a mi rosal
as you thought, the above is OK
Puedes le poner agua a mi rosal
as you thought, the above is NOT OK. For one thing, you cannot separate poder from the other verb when poder is an auxiliary verb.
Puedes ponerle agua a mi rosal
The above is also correct, you can attach the le to the infinitive
The final question is a little complicated.
You can say either:
Puedes ponerle agua a mi rosal (using mi rosa as an indirect object)
Puedes poner agua en mi rosal. (using mi rosa as an object of a preposition)
So, you can have:
Puedes poner agua en mi rosal.
Puedes poner agua en ella. (less common, but I it is grammatically correct)
You can put water on it.
I say this form is uncommon, because normally, when Spanish allows the use of indirect pronouns in lieu of preposition + object of preposition, this is what is done. In the case of English, it is much more common to use them interchangeably without a strong preference of one vs. the other.
Or:
Puedes ponerle agua a mi rosa.
Puedes ponerle agua.
You can put water on it.
This still is the English translation, even though the Spanish proposition "en" does not appear. Or....you can water my flower...no preposition. In no case would we use "to" in English. Don't think of Spanish "a" = English to" Sometimes it is, sometimes is isn't, they are separate languages...you can't map one onto the other perfectly on a word-for-word basis.
As you note, Spanish is somewhat more forgiving in terms of using indirect objects without pronouns, and the "omitted/understood" pronouns in English are not always "to" The "understood pronoun can be to, from, at, in, on and others. The indirect object in Spanish can be anything that is receiving either a benefit, detriment or some other effect (even an emotional effect) from the action of the verb.
It only seems confusing when people try to translate something word for word while trying to make it make sense in another language. Languages differ from one another. Recognise this and your acquisition of another language will be much less confusing.
¿Puedes ponerle agua a mi rosal?
Can you water my rose garden? Another way to say this is ¿Puedes regar mi rosal? which is closer to your sentence in English. In Spanish there is no exact verb to say to water.
We can say either Le puedes poner agua or Puedes ponerle agua.
a mi rosal can be eliminated if you want, but if the context is not clear it should be included. This is a phrase for clarification.
Also you will very rarely hear the use of poder in these kinds of sentences because, of course anybody has the ability to water flowers, it just sounds very unnatural. We would say, ie: ¿Me haces el favor de regar mi rosal?
