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LE, LO or LA? Spanish Object Pronouns Explained (Direct vs Indirect Objects)

Dieser Beitrag erklärt ein wichtiges Thema der spanischen Grammatik (Text auf Englisch).

Direct and indirect object

You need to understand this in order to speak Spanish.

🔍 Direct object: it is the object of the action, which is not necessarily a physical object. It could be a thing, a person, an animal, anything. Examples:

I eat pizza. Como pizza. Pizza is the direct object.

I see the dog. Veo al perro. Al perro is the direct object.

I visit my sister. Visito a mi hermana. A mi hermana is the direct object.

Notice that when the direct object is a person or an animal related to people, we put the so called personal A:

Veo al perro. Visito a mi hermana.

There is only one proper way to recognise the direct object: transforming the active sentence into a passive sentence. Any other explanation is not linguistically accurate. Example:

I eat pizza. Como pizza.

Active sentence (because I am doing something, the subject is active)

Pizza is eaten by me. La pizza es comida por mí.

Passive sentence (because the pizza is not doing anything, the subject is passive)

The direct object of the active voice becomes the subject of the passive voice.

🔍 Indirect object: again, it could be a thing, a person, an animal, anything. But this time, it refers to what or who is affected by the action. Examples:

I gave Mary the money. Le di el dinero a María.

Le and a María are the indirect object. The money is the direct object.

I told them the truth. Les dije la verdad.

Les is the indirect object. The truth is the direct object.

Notice that in Spanish is mandatory to put the pronoun when you have an indirect object:

I gave Mary the money.

✅ Le di el dinero a María.

❌ Di el dinero a María.

LE, LO, LA

🔍 For the direct object, the pronouns are lo, la, los, las. Examples:

Como la pizza. La como. I eat the pizza. I eat it.

Como el pollo. Lo como. I eat the chicken. I eat it.

Como las naranjas. Las como. I eat the oranges. I eat them.

Como los helados. Los como. I eat the ice creams. I eat them.

🔍 For the indirect object, the pronouns are le, les. Examples:

Le doy el libro. I give him the book. I give her the book. We have the same form for “him/her”, it is always “le”.

Les doy el dinero. I give them the money.

This is the correct explanation. But you know that we speak Spanish in more than twenty countries, so you can imagine how many differences are not only from one country to another, but also in different regions of the same country. So you need to be aware that there are two cases where some people switch the forms. We call them “leísmo” (when people use le for the direct object, something that is really frequent in North and centre of Spain, and in Paraguay due to the influence of the Guaraní language) and “laísmo” (when people use lo, la for the indirect object). These are deviations from the general rule and must be avoided in standard Spanish.

Example from the episode

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Spanish GCSE Reading and Grammar-Constance e Imran Episode 9 (learn through a novel)