LPS: Lesson - Los pronombres de objeto directo

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Los pronombres de objeto directo - Direct object pronouns.

Contrary to what you may think at first, direct object pronouns in Spanish are here to make your life easier.

Spanish direct object pronouns like me, te, lo, and la are an essential part of a Spanish speaker's vocabulary so it’s important that you fully grasp this concept.

What are Spanish Direct Object Pronouns?

Simply put, a direct object pronoun replaces a direct object, which is a noun. The noun in question could be a person, a thing, or a noun phrase that directly receives the action of the verb in a sentence.

By replacing this noun, you can avoid unnecessarily repeating a noun that you've already defined. It’s not just a Spanish thing though. You have direct object pronouns in English too. In fact, here is a quick example in English to give you an idea:

  • Marco is coming to visit. We are going to see him at the restaurant.
    • Marco is the noun being replaced. By using "him" we avoid repeating "Marco" when it is clear who we are talking about.

If you are not exactly sure what this means right now, no worries! There will be lots of examples coming your way to make sense of all this pronoun jargon.

When you replace the direct object with a direct object pronoun you must make sure it agrees in number (singular, plural) and gender (feminine, masculine) with the noun being replaced.

Direct Object Pronouns

Here are the direct object pronouns that you need to master in this lesson. The Spanish pronoun is in bold, with the English meaning following.

Direct Object Pronouns
Person Singular Plural
1st Person me - me nos - us
2nd Person (informal) te - you (informal) os - you (plural, informal)
3rd Person / 2nd Person (formal) lo, la - him, her, it, you (formal) los, las - them, you (formal)

How to Say "It" in Spanish

Have you ever stopped to think about the consequence of a language only having two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine? There's no "neuter" or neutral gender, so how would you say "it" in such a language?

The answer comes from understanding how pronouns work in Spanish. Remember above when we said that the direct object pronoun must agree with the gender of the noun it replaces? Spanish only has two genders for their nouns, and so that means that lo and la will be used to replace any singular noun in the 3rd person. Lo refers to any masculine noun, while la refers to any feminine noun.

Well then, how do you know which gender to use if your pronoun is "it" in English? It will still be based on the original noun - remember, Spanish only uses masculine and feminine, so your noun will be either one or the other. 

Example:

  • You took a photograph. I would like to see it.
    • Would you use lo or la in Spanish?
    • Answer: it depends on the gender of photograph, which is la fotografía. That's feminine, so we would use la to express the direct object pronoun in this example.

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