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Spanish Direct/Indirect Object Pronouns · Acedra
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Spanish Direct/Indirect Object Pronouns
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0:10
today's class, I'm going to help you so you don't get confused by all these little words, and we're going to learn a little bit of grammar, but in context. Hi, I'm Brenda Romaniello, your Spanish teacher at Hola Spanish and director of the Spanish Fluency Club program. Today's class has a PDF that you can download. In the class notes, you have a summary of the entire explanation of today's class. You also
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have exercises so you can practice. I'll leave you the link. It's free. You can download it in the video description. Alright, well, first things first, what are the words I mentioned at the beginning of class? El, le, les, lo, la, los, las... They are pronouns, in this case, they are direct object pronouns and indirect object pronouns, and they are called that because they replace another word in a sentence. The direct object is the thing or person in a sentence that is directly
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modified by the verb, for example, if I tell you John buys a book, the book is the direct object and I'm going to explain how you can find it, identify it, or detect it, but the interesting thing is that to avoid repetition and not repeat the same thing all the time, we use pronouns to replace things or people, and these are the direct object pronouns. In this case, let's see the direct object pronouns. We have la to replace a thing,
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a person of the feminine singular gender. Las is for the feminine plural. We're going to use it to replace a thing, a person of the masculine gender, yes, singular, and We're going to use them to replace a thing, a person of the masculine plural, but then how do we find the direct object in a sentence? Let's look at another example, if I say Denise and Mario sent letters to us, first we need to find the verb or the action. In our case, the verb is,
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tell me, what is it? They sent. Okay, in the case of Juan buys a book the verb is buy once you've identified the verb what we have to do next is identify the subject of the sentence that is who is performing the action in order to find the subject we ask the verb what or who or whom is plus the verb in this case of our example we are going to ask: what, who or who sent letters? The answer is Denise and Mario and in the case of Juan buys
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a book Juan is the one who buys the book so we now have the subjects once we know who the subject is who is performing the action and what the action is we are going to ask what plus verb plus subject for example what did Denise and Mario send? The answer is letters and in the case of Juan what is Juan buying? A book so you can see that we have identified our direct object letter is our direct object and a book is the other one in the other sentence. To replace this word
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and avoid repetition with a pronoun we need to know the gender and number of this object let's look at the table again now we're going to replace letters and we need a pronoun one of these pronouns letters is feminine plural so the pronoun we need to use here is las and for el libro in the case of the book in Juan's example we're going to need to replace el libro with the masculine singular attention the direct object pronouns go before the verb so we're going
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to replace Denise and Mario sent letters to us we're going to say Denise and Mario sent them to us or Juan buys it this is if the direct object is a thing but I had also told you that it can be a person a thing or a person when the direct object is a person it will always have the preposition a before for example we can say Carla takes Maria to the airport. The process is exactly the same the verb is lleva Who takes
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yes, Carla? And a quién or a quién is plus the verb plus the subject Who does Carla take to the airport? In this case, María is our direct object and if we want to replace María with a pronoun to avoid repetition, we can look at the table again and as you can see here María is feminine and is a single person, so we need to replace María with la. Remember that we have to put the pronoun before the verb, so we're going to say Carla la.
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takes you to the airport. Later we'll see more examples so you can practice, but now we'll move on to indirect object pronouns. The indirect object, to begin with, is the person or thing indirectly modified by the verb. The indirect object indicates who or for whom the action is performed. The indirect object is directly modified by the direct object because it is the person or thing that receives the direct object. This is where our direct object goes. Remember that
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the indirect object can be a person or a thing, and it depends on the personal pronoun. Let's look at the table very carefully to replace these. These are the indirect object pronouns. We have for I: me; You: te; He / She / You: le; We: nos; You: os; and You / They / They: les. Let's reanalyze the sentence at the beginning: we said: Denise and Mario sent letters to us. To find the indirect object in this sentence, we can ask: who or for
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whom plus verb plus subject plus direct object. Look at this example. Remember that the indirect object is the one who receives the action. Who did Denise and Mario send letters to? To whom did Denise and Mario send letters? The answer is "us." Perfect, then, we've found our indirect object. Now that we've found it, let's see what the appropriate or corresponding indirect object pronoun is to replace it. For us, the indirect object pronoun is "us."
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To replace it, let's rewrite the sentence. The process is the same. Remember, we have to put the indirect object pronoun before the verb. Denise and Mario sent letters to us. Let's rewrite it to avoid repetition. We're going to say "Denise and Mario sent letters to us." Okay, I think everything is correct so far, right? Is everything more or less understood? Are you following me this far? I hope so. Now comes the slightly more complicated part, but it's not impossible. Let's see the
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step-by-step process of how to replace both at the same time. What happens when we have a direct object and an indirect object at the same time in a sentence? In Spanish, we can replace both with one pronoun, making the sentence much shorter and avoiding monotony and repetition. Of course, we need context, but how do we do it? Okay, that's exactly what we're going to see now first we're going to put in the indirect object pronoun and then the
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direct object pronoun basically it's the other way around of the main clause look I'm going to show you so you can see an example Denise and Mario sent letters to us when we have the original sentence you can see that we have sent letters first we have the direct object letters and then we have the indirect object to us when we replace with the pronouns we're going to say letters we're going to replace it the direct object pronoun is going to be las and for us remember that the
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indirect object pronoun is nos but remember that to put it we're going to change the order so we're going to say Denise and Mario sent them to us as you can see first we put nos the indirect object pronoun and then we put las the direct object pronoun all right now we're going to do the whole process but with another example are you ready? Let's practice Julio prepares tacos for his wife every night can you imagine eating tacos every night? Why not? Okay the action or verb here
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is prepare then we have to find the subject who prepares who or who prepares? Julio, Julio is our subject our next question is what? What does Julio prepare? What does he prepare, right? What more verb plus subject What does Julio prepare? The answer is tacos tacos is our direct object tacos is masculine plural and therefore we are going to need the direct object pronoun los to replace it we are going to replace then Julio prepares tacos for his wife every
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night we can rewrite this sentence replacing the direct object as Julio prepares them for his wife every night. Now we are going to change the indirect object remember our question is for whom or for whom does Julio prepare the tacos? The answer is for his wife the indirect object who is going to receive the tacos is his wife and so for her, no right, her we have to replace with the indirect pronoun le we are going to replace everything Julio prepares
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tacos for his wife every night let's say Julio prepares tacos for her every night now let's replace both at the same time meaning we're going to use the direct object pronouns and the indirect object pronouns at the same time we had already said that we were going to replace tacos with los and that we were going to replace his wife with le then we would have Julio prepares them for him every night. Stop, stop, stop, stop, no no no that's okay no no no no. I have bad
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news what? Ah, Brenda I was understanding up to here, what's the problem? Okay, let me explain in Spanish when we have le la le lo le or les la les lo les las les it's hard for me to say it we change the indirect object pronoun le and les it changes to se so when we have le or les before lo la los and las it becomes se, se lo, se la, se los, se las. It's a matter of cacophony, that is to say, to avoid the sentence sounding bad or being uncomfortable to the ear, for me it was quite difficult
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to say them le las las. Then it would be Julio prepares tacos for his wife every night, we're going to replace it with Julio prepares them every night. Ah, it sounds like music to my ears. It's also important to mention that it is very common in Spanish to repeat the indirect object or mention it again even when mentioning the indirect object pronoun, and that is to avoid confusion. If you think about it, there are many people who could be le or les, right? It could be he she they they you
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there are too many people so to avoid ambiguity and to emphasize sometimes we also mention it and I think most of the time we mention it twice for example Julio is married to Clara and she loves to eat tacos she likes them so much that Julio prepares them for his wife every night did you see in this example it was redundant to say Clara again so we replaced Clara with the direct object pronouns indirect object but we repeated
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his wife again don't worry if it's a little confusing I have another example and also some exercises to practice I also did a class that you can go to see where I explain the six uses of SE which can be very confusing you can go to that class after seeing this one we are going to see this example my cousins told the secret to Carla and Camila we are going to do the same process to find the direct object the verb is told the subject is my cousins so the question is what other verb, right?
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What did my cousins tell? The secret the secret is our direct object to replace secret it is masculine singular we are going to replace it with the pronoun my cousins told Carla and Camila very well let's find the indirect object who did they tell the secret to? To Carla and Camila here we have the indirect object so let's see how we are going to replace Carla and Camila well as they are two people here in the plural we need the
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indirect object pronoun we are going to replace everything then My cousins told Carla and Camila the secret we are going to say my cousins told them the secret very well but remember that we cannot have it we have to tell them My cousins told it to them once more we can also emphasize and repeat it to Carla and Camila my cousins told Carla and Camila before going with the exercises remember what happens when we have the direct object which is a person let's practice
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how to replace it with a person for example They helped my brother remember our question is who did they help? To my brother to my brother is the direct object here and therefore we need to replace it with lo and we are going to say they helped him it is important to remember that when the direct object is a person it always goes with the preposition a you have to remember it but attention it is also common that for example in Spain and in some Latin American countries
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they use the indirect object pronoun to replace it and in many places they say they helped him. Interesting isn't it? And you want to know another curious fact about Córdoba in Córdoba in Argentina where I am from it is common for us to duplicate the direct object when it is a person similar to what we do with the indirect object but with the direct object when it is a person which is technically incorrect for example I am going to call my mother it is very common to hear the people of Córdoba
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say "I'm going to call my mom" "I'm going to call my mom." And repeating it is redundant but we do it a lot we repeat the direct object very well to practice now we are going to do some exercises you have a very short quiz and you have to select the correct option to replace each sentence with the corresponding pronouns are you ready? Let's go what is the correct option here AB or C which is correct? How are we going to replace? The correct answer is A They are organizing it very well let's go
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with the next one next number two what is the correct option to replace here AB or C?
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The correct answer is C Maria wrote him a letter let's go with the next one number three what is the correct option to B or C? The correct answer is B We are serving it to him let's go with number four what is the correct option A B or C? How are we going to replace here? The correct answer is A Juan wants to buy it. Let's go with the next one number five which is correct here to replace it A, B, or C? The correct answer is B. I'm going to send you an
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email, and we'll go with the last one, number six. Which one is correct here, AB or C? The correct answer is B. Ana is returning them. Remember that in the class notes you have more exercises to practice, and you also have the correct answers. I'll leave you the link in the video description. Wow! What a class today, right? Tell me in the comments how you did with the exercises. Were you able to understand how direct and indirect objects work in Spanish. Tell me
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in the comments. Did you like the class? If you liked the class, give it a like. Remember to subscribe to the channel. If you're new here, we upload Spanish classes every week. And if you want to improve your Spanish with me, I invite you to my Spanish Fluency Club program. There you have a structured class with me, a class that I send you every Monday to complete with a study plan to follow. You also have access to our weekly group conversation classes with different
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teachers from Latin America and Spain. I'll leave you all the information about my Spanish Fluency Club program in the video description. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm going to leave this class with you. If you want to continue with this topic, you can go watch this class in which I also explain how direct and indirect objects work. See you in this class. Bye, see you later.
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