Lesson 37: 'Lo' and 'le' - 'him' and 'to him' explained
Knowing when to use 'lo' and when to use 'le' is one of the more tricky areas of Spanish but easy enough once we get our head around a few concepts.
We'll consider this all with the verb 'dar' - "to give" - so let's just practice putting that verb together in the future tense.
Remember in the last lesson we covered how you could know all its forms by following some set rules (rather than memorizing) so if you do that you should get this
 Spanish |  English |
|---|---|
| Daré | I will give |
| Daremos | We will give |
| Dara | He/she will give |
| Darán | They/you guys will give |
| Daras | You (informal) will give |
Now if we look at what seems to be a difficult sentence - "Will you guys give it to me?" - we first need to think about how it is said in Spanish in basic terms - in other words as a statement pronounced as a question: "You guys will give it to me?"
Then the word order (for which we can use the "melody" rule: 'Me lo dí' (I gave it to myself) which sounds like "melody"). So its "to me it you guys will give?"
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ¿Me lo darán? | Will you guys give it to me? |
So what is a long and complex sentence in English is very short and simple in Spanish.
One thing we do have to watch out for is the 'lo' because if the word for the thing we are talking about is feminine (like 'casa') we need to use 'la'
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ¿Me la darán? | Will you guys give it to me? |
Just a short note of clarity here - in English we often use "Will you give it to me?" the same as "Can you give it to me?" You don't get this cross over in Spanish. "Will you ..." very much means "Are you going to ...". If you want to ask "Can you ...." you would use 'Poder'.
OK - back to giving! Let's try another sentence - "They will give you something".
Again think out the word order and start with the verb - "to you they will give something".
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Te darán algo | They will give you (informal) something |
| Te lo darán | They will give it to you |
| Nos lo darán | They will give it to us |
| No nos lo darán | They will not give it to us |
Me, te, nos
What's clear here is that these small words - me, te, nos, can have wide ranging meanings:
- 'me' - me, to me, for me, myself
- 'te' - you, to you, for you, yourself
- 'nos' - us, to us, for us, ourselves
It all just depends where they are in the sentence.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Me doy | I give myself |
While we're talking about this now is a good time to understand a slightly strange way to say "I realize" in Spanish. You would say this as 'Me doy cuenta' which literally means "I give myself account" or more smoothly "I take account".
There is a Spanish verb - 'realizar' which does translate as "to realize" but only in the sense of making something happen - "I realized the project". To realize something youself you need to "take accoun if it" and this is a phrase you will hear a lot in the Spanish speaking world!
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Me doy cuenta | I realize |
| Te das cuenta | You realize |
| ¿Te das cuenta? | Do you realize? |
| Nos damos cuenta | We realize |
So me, te and nos stay the same even though what they literally mean can change.
But for the "he" and "them" we do see a change form 'lo / la' to 'le' and 'los / las' to 'les' when we are referring to "to him" or "to her" or "to them".
So if we say "I give her [something]" in English we are really saying "I give to her [something]" but the "to" has dropped out of the English language.
In Spanish we need to think if that "to" exists and if it does we'll use 'le' instead of 'lo / la' and 'les' instead of 'los / las'.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Los doy | I give them (the things) |
| Les doy | I give (to) them |
| Les doy algo | I give (to) them something |
| Le he hablado | I have spoken to him/her/you (formal) |
| Le hemos hablado | We have spoken to him/her/you (formal) |
| Le han hablado | They have spoken to him/her/you (formal) |
| Les han hablado | They have spoken to them / you guys |
Le and Les with 'Cocinar' - to cook
You might have remembered in an earlier lesson we came across the word for "kitchen" - 'Cocina'. All we need to do is add an 'r' to the end of that and we have "to cook". We'll use this to practice the 'le' and 'les' concepts
It takes a bit of practice to get this "to" idea flowing. All the time we need to consider is something being done "to" the person or "for" the person or is the person the action itself:
- INDIRECT: "He is cooking for him" - use 'le'
- DIRECT: "He is cooking him!" - use 'lo'
Now remember this doesn't affect me, te and nos - they will always be the same. This is just for lo, la, los and las.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Me cocina algo | He is cooking me something |
| Nos cocina algo | He is cooking us something |
| Te cocina algo | He is cooking you something |
| Le cocina algo | He is cooking him something |
| Les cocina algo | He is cooking them something |
| Los cocina | He is cooking them (the things) |
| Nos las cocina | He is cooking them (the feminine things) for us |
| Le hablo | I speak to him |
| Les hablo | I'm speaking to them |
| Les hablan | They are speaking to them |