Direct and Indirect Object Pronouns in Spanish

Notes around learning direct and indirect object pronouns in Spanish taken from my Kata The Object Shuffle.

Direct Object

• Person, animal, or object that the verb falls upon

If we look at the sentence:

Yo veo a María todos los días.

We see that the verb falls upon María, so María is the direct object.

In this case, we would know we can use

Yo la veo todos los días.

We replace a María with la because María is a feminine noun.

Indirect Object

Indirect objects are what I like to call side effects of the primary actions that occur to a direct object.

They receive the verbal action in an indirect or secondary way.

If we look at this sentence:

Yo escribo una carta a mi madre.

If we dissect it down we get the following sections:

• una carta
• a mi madre

When we think of side effects, it’s becomes quite obvious what the indirect object is because the side effect of writing a letter is that it is sent to someone.

When we look at it like this, then we can also tell the direct object is una carta because the verb escribo falls upon una carta.

So we get

• una carta is being written -> Direct Object
• a mi madre is the receiver of the letter -> Indirect Object

Let’s look at another example:

El profesor explica la leccíon a los estudiantes.

If we have to break down both la leccíon and a los estudiantes then we need to think of the placement.

• la leccíon is the direct object because the verb explica falls upon la leccíon.
• a los estudiantes is the indirect object because the side effect of explaining a lesson is that it is explained to someone.

So we get:

• la leccíon is being explained -> Direct Object
• a los estudiantes is the receiver of the lesson -> Indirect Object

However, naturally we want to do something like

El profesor les la explica.

We need to think about 2 things:

• With conjugated verbs like explica, where do the pronouns go?
• When you put les directly before la, what happens to les?

We know that pronouns go before conjugated verbs like explica, because of the direct object representation. However, in Spanish if you try to say les la you get a sound clash. In order to fix this sound clash you replace les with se.

El profesor se la explica.

So we get:

• la is the direct object
• se is the indirect object

Infinitive construction

When working with infinitive constructions we need to watch the verb form.

Let’s look at the sentence:

Voy a dar el regalo a mi novia.

The pronouns must stay together, but let’s identify the direct and indirect objects.

• el regalo is the direct object
• a mi novia is the indirect object

If our objective is to replace both el regalo and a mi novia with pronouns, we must be considerate of the infinitive form of dar.

When le (a mi novia) comes right before lo (el regalo), it converts to se similar to what we did in the previous sentence and with an infinitive, both pronouns go at the end.

This leads to a one word formation. Darselo

However, it’s important to note that when you add syllables to an infinitive by attaching pronouns, Spanish will usually need an accent to preserve that original stress.

This results in

Dárselo

So we get:

Voy a dárselo

It’s important to note you can provide the same meaning by adjusting the pronoun placement where the pronouns are placed before the conjugated verb.

Se lo voy a dar

Let’s look at one final sentence.

Estoy leyendo el periódico a mi abuelo.

This one focuses on gerund construction (-ndo), but it’s important to note that you can follow the same rules as with an infinitive.

• Attach to the conjugated verb
• Place before the conjugated verb

Before the conjugated verb

Se lo estoy leyendo

Attached to the conjugated verb

Estoy leyéndoselo

To remember

• What? / Whom? -> Direct object -> lo/la/los/las
• To whom? / For whom? -> Indirect object -> le/les
• Le/les + lo/la/los/las -> se + lo/la/los/les

A cool mnemonic to remember for le lo transformation is the following

Don't say le lo, se lo , se lo sounds like say lo so it’s a play on the words and easier to remember. It’s to enforce the fact that you should use se instead of le when you have both pronouns.