This is indeed a confusing topic. Thank you! One thing that confuses me about these direct/indirect object usages is that you CAN say Yo amo a Nate or Yo lo amo. And you do NOT need to say Yo lo amo a Nate. But if you are using LE, for example you CANNOT say Yo digo a Nate, but you have to say Yo LE digo a Nate or simply Yo LE digo. In other words, you must use LE(indirect object) before the verb even if you name who is receiving the action, but you do not need to use LO or LA (direct object?) before the verb if you are naming the object after the verb. Did I get this right? I confess that even in English I am confused by direct and indirect objects.

I've been studying Spanish daily for over 5 years (multiple DuoLingo lessons a day) and I still struggle with lo, le, la, las, les, and los. Drives me bonkers because every time I think I've got a handle on it I miss a bunch of lessons.

Could lo veo mean I see it as well as I see him?

@@wendytanowitz9836 Yes. "lo" is the singular masculine object pronoun therefore it can mean 'him' as in "I see him" and it can mean 'it' as in "I see it" as long as the 'it' is referring to something singular masculine in Spanish like a book (un libro), a watch (un reloj), a mouse (un ratón), etc.

@@maryf.sprogell3606 I love your attention to detail. The following are my native speaker intuitions on this topic: 1) Yo lo amo a Messi. ✅ ('lo' is optional) 2) Yo amo a Messi. ✅ 3) Yo lo amo. ✅ ('lo' is NOT optional because 'yo amo' out of context sounds incomplete. 4) Yo le digo a Messi. ✅ ('le' is NOT optional) 5) Yo le digo. ✅ (context provides who the indirect object is, but it's gotta be a third person singular to match 'le' 6) Yo digo a Messi. ❌ (ungrammatical) 7) Yo digo. ❓/ ✅ (maybe grammatical but it lacks context because we always 'say' something (direct object) to someone (indirect object), context could validate the utterance so it's not necessarily ungrammatical. As you can see, 'le' cannot be absent in 6) but it CAN be absent in 7) because we can use the combination 'yo digo' in general statements when we don't have a specific indirect object in mind, for example: 8) Yo digo la verdad siempre. ✅ (= I always tell the truth). In 8), we are only stating the we always tell the truth but we are not specifying to whom we tell the truth. We leave out the 'le' (indirect object pronoun) because the indirect object (the receiver of the direct object) is unspecified. BUT as soon as we have a more clear indirect object as in 4) (Messi = indirect object) or a clear indirect object as in 5) (the indirect object is not present in the sentence but the le is there because context has already specified who it is, AND if for any reason context has not yet specified who the indirect object is, as soon as you say "yo le digo" out loud, any native Spanish speaker will IMMEDIATELY ask "le dices a QUIEN???" because their brain will desperately need to fill the empty gap (the lack of explicit indirect object) that the context has not fulfilled. I hope this helps! Saludos!!!

Thank you for the kind words Aynur!! 😊

Thank you!! Glad you liked the lesson 👍

Samezzzies

¡¡Gracias Amy!! Muy bien 😊

Glad it helped Shannon! 😊

The pronunciation and spelling is hard enough, but the grammar is tough.

Español tiene más silabas que inglés y tengo que escuchar con cuidado de cada silaba - por eso español parece más rápido.

Glad you found it helpful! 😊

Thanks for the feedback Lee! 🙏

¡Gracias Cleona! 😊

¡Gracias Charles! 😊

Laísmo stands out a lot if you were not raised in a " laísta " place . The fun thing is that it happens innplaces that brag about " not having an accent " ( Madrid ) or " speaking the better Spanish" ( Valladolid ) , and it sounds like a fork scratching on a dish for anyone from outside of " La meseta " .

Thanks for the feedback Laura! 😊 No videos on past tenses yet, but it's a good idea!!

DOP and IDOP??? Please explain

@@hemantraj5232 direct object pronouns and indirect object pronouns 😊

Gracias

Totally agree with you!!!

Thanks Katherine!! 👍

Thanks Scott! 🙏

¡De nada! 😊

Old Latin dative declension ("to him/her") is le, Latin accusative (him/er) is lo/la. Hence, I tell (to) her, This pleases her (le gusta) is perhaps more literally "this is pleasing to her," etc.

that is where it is confusing. the word indirect object pronoun. youve lost me already

Thanks for the kind words! 😊

It's a great suggestion Anita!! 👍

Fue=was, era=used to be

In the description, not the comments

Yes, this is a good point! 😊

Thanks for the question! I tried to make the point in the video that there isn't necessarily a "correct" and "incorrect", just a common pattern or situations that break the pattern in the form of "leísmo", "loísmo" or "laísmo".

Thanks Phil! Yes, that’s right! 😊 Try to reduce the mental processing where possible.

Hola Sue, this is a critical question that comes up a lot!! It's best to think that the "nos" is required and the "a nosotros" is optional. So, we can have both the "nos" and "a nosotros" in this sentence or we can drop the "a nosotros".

Traer is a ditransitive verb which is just a technical term to describe a verb that requires both a direct object AND an indirect object because we bring SOMETHING (= direct object) to/for SOMEONE (indirect object, that is, the receiver of the something. All ditransitive verbs like 'traer' demand that there be an indirect object pronoun BECAUSE the sentence has an indirect object. So in your example: "Juan nos trajo la comida a nosotros", NOS is the indirect object pronoun that points to the indirect object NOSOTROS, the receivers of the direct object (la comida). Nos is the indirect object pronoun and it is required by the verb 'traer' just like any other ditransitive verbs like traer does. (decir, mostrar, dar, enseñar, etc). Now, let's not confuse 'nos' (indirect object pronoun) with 'nos' (direct object pronoun). They are spelled the same (homographs) and they sound the same (homophones) but they are different words. English is full of homographs and homophones as well ( and we English learners have to deal with it hahah, I am a native Spanish speaker). Examples: 1) "to" (preposition) as in "to the kitchen) vs "to" infinitive marker as in "in order to eat" 2) "that" (determiner) as in "that book is great" vs "that" (complementizer) as in "I believe that she is great" 3) "bank" (financial center), "bank" (river side) etc

Yes, very true!! 😊

It is! Here in Spain there are places where we use always le (it's called leísmo) or la (laísmo) instead of lo. I guess there can also be a loismo? But I live in the center of Spain where we are leistas so I'm not sure lmfao

@@EfeFlet LESIMO is perfectly grammatical and I like it when I hear it, I love the Spain variety! I am not 100% LEISTA myself (I'm from Argentina). I am a descriptive linguist and I totally support all natural and perfectly grammatical varieties of the language, be it Spanish, English, or any language, so I like LEISMO because there is a whole speech community of people that use it daily, therefore it is technically considered natural language. Saludos amig@

Thanks for the feedback Tomer! I always caution students to avoid "why" questions because they tend to lead to more logic-based decision-making which doesn't help with smooth and quick language production. It's best to try to think "le digo" and "le doy" and minimise any other mental processing.

No on topics like this I LOVE THE WAY YOU EXPLAIN THIS. I have watched many many videos on this, and this is literally the best. Some topics are so complex and getting into the logic based decision making takes too long or is too confusing. I am not a beginner but finding rules like this help so much. The simple video on llevar v traer helped me so much and I don’t make that error anymore.

But "I listen to him" is lo escucho...

Thanks Bill, it's a good suggestion! Might be worth a video!!! 😊

If you start with the verbs in this video, the other verbs will start to fee more intuitive over time.

@@realfastspanish thanks !

@@realfastspanish what are a few other common LE verbs tho that u can think of?

Thanks Steve! Please note it's not technically "wrong", that is the purpose of the term "leísmo", it's a "correct alternative" way of using the grammar in certain regions.

@@realfastspanish Well said! It's linguistic variation and it's perfectly correct (grammatical) and natural.

Yes, Nick your examples are great! This video is a basic rule of thumb. I tried to stress that it was a ‘dramatic’ simplification but a useful starting point. It sounds like you are closer to mastery with this topic so you don’t need this video.

I was hoping to make this video as simple as possible. If you watch it a few times, hopefully it will make sense.

Sí, muy bien 👍

It sounds like you might be referring to the lesson of the personal "a". Look it up on this channel if you haven't seen it yet.

Thanks Leon. We just need to be careful. “Lo” can mean “him” and “le” can also mean “him”. Check out the examples again to see this in action.

And you are right, las hojas is indeed the direct object of cortar. The les is not referring to las hojas, but rather to the plants that had the hojas attached prior to the cutting. Out of context, les makes it clear that the possessor of las hojas has to be a plural one, such as las plantas, or los árboles, or even los libros (as las hojas could be referring to the paper sheets inside a book or notebook).

Yes, your example is great! 👌

@@realfastspanish I did some research and found out that other experts claim that faltar can "work like" gustar. If you think about it gustar is an act of giving. In other words I don't like the ball, rather the ball "gives me pleasure" or in other words the ball is pleasing me. I still need to think about faltar and learn about how to use it. Might be a great topic for a future video. I have one additional comment on this subject but wanted to add that I play Duo Lingo, and your right just about every time I run into the word le or les in that game it is either someone saying or giving something to someone or a verb that works like gustar. Great short video. As a note to your readers, playing duo lingo does not really help all that much with becoming fluent, in a language, it only helps you play duo lingo better. But it is fun and dangerously addicting. This video has definitely improved my duo lingo. Keep up the good work.

@@realfastspanish I read the really great article that is linked to in the article description and it says that faltar is number 16 on the list of "most commonly used words like gustar". Great article, and this is a really great and thought provoking topic.