This afternoon (and part of the previous one), I spent some time in one of the e-books I mentioned in a previous post and studied direct and indirect object pronouns, as well as pronouns acting as objects of prepositions. For some of you, this might be akin to a visit to the dentist’s office. As a word nerd, I was ecstatic to be getting into a lesson that wasn’t teaching me how to ask for cream in my coffee. (Not that I have anything against coffee. Or cream. Love them both!)
Be direct with me.
The first lesson I popped open discussed the use of Spanish pronouns as direct objects. I found it interesting (as in, it cleared up some mysteries) that the direct object pronoun in Español actually precedes the verb. I’ve seen that before, but I never realized what was going on — that there was a grammatical convention in place that brought about such an anomaly. (Well, an anomaly to an English speaker.)
This happens, however, only when the direct object is a pronoun, I should point out — not when the object is a noun. Here’s an example whose style (but not content) I borrowed from my book, Rocket Languages Beginners Spanish, which is included with the 1st level (Premium) course.
Sentence using nouns:
Lupita has my computer.
Lupita tiene mi computadora.
Sentence using pronoun (referring to computer/computadora as an antecedent, of course):
Lupita has it.
Lupita lo tiene.
See what happened there? (Okay, I bold-faced it, so you’d be hard-pressed not to see it.) But the pronoun “lo“, which translates to “it” in English, came before the verb tiene. Strange; right? (Well, for native English speakers, anyway.) It gets better.
Or indirect, for that matter…
The indirect object, for those of you who don’t retain all of the geeky lessons you learned in high school (or middle school?) grammar classes, is the person or other object for whom (rather than to whom) an action is taken. Like the direct object, in Spanish, the indirect object in pronoun form comes before the verb. Example:
With nouns:
Joaquin wants to play a song for Lupita.
Joaquin quiere jugar una canción para Lupita.
With pronouns:
Joaquin wants to play a song for her.
Joaquin le quiere jugar una canción.
Again, the indirect object belongs just before the verb. And so, of course, does the direct object. Which got me to thinking: What happens when there’s a pronoun acting as both a direct and indirect object? Glad I asked!
First things first…
I can’t help it. I’m still trying to work out, for example, when adjectives come before their noun and when they follow. These rules are interesting to me. I need to understand — not just memorize — the language in which I’m wanting to be fluent. So, I immediately began wondering about what happened in cases where both objects were pronouns. Yo fui muy feliz when the very next chapter I read handled just that situation.
It so happens that, when a sentence uses pronouns as both its direct and indirect object, both precede the verb. The indirect object appears first, then the direct object, and then the verb. Here is an example.
With nouns:
Lupita gave her bag to Joaquin.
Lupita entregó su bolsa a Joaquin.
With pronouns:
Lupita gave it to him.
Lupita se lo entregó.
There was also a lesson on pronouns as objects of prepositions. However, I’m running late in selecting a good song for you for this Wednesday on YouTube, so I’ll have to come back to them in an upcoming post. Meanwhile, I’m planning to get back to my audio lessons this week, and I should have something to share with you on that topic next time. I’m looking forward to both the learning and the sharing.
¡Hasta luego, amigas!
