Direct and Indirect Object Pronouns - Pronombres de Objeto Directo y Objeto Indirecto
"Do you have the book?"
"No, I don't have the book."
"Do you know if Mary has the book?"
"No, I don't know if Mary has the book."
Doesn't that sound odd to you? The reason that it sounds so strange is that we aren't used to so much repetition in our sentences. In order to avoid that, we frequently use pronouns to replace nouns once we have made it clear what we are talking about. Instead of repeating "the book" so many times, we would probably replace the phrase with the word "it". Read the following lines and see if it sounds better to you.
"Do you have the book?"
"No, I don't have it."
We do the same thing in Spanish. However, in Spanish the situation is a little bit more complicated than in English.
Let's take a look first at the way that words are used in sentences. Look at the following sentence.
I need the book.
Who needs something? Of course we can see that "I" need something. The word "I" is the subject of the sentence. "The book" tell us what I need. That is the DIRECT OBJECT of the verb in this sentence. Now, if we replace the direct object with a pronoun (in this case the word "it"), we would call this the DIRECT OBJECT PRONOUN. That is what we will focus on in this lesson.
In English when we replace a singular noun with a pronoun used as a direct object, we only have one choice, the word "it". In Spanish the situation is a little bit more complicated. Remember, we have two categories of nouns in Spanish, the "O" category and the "A" category. Let's see how this affects our use of direct object pronouns in Spanish sentences.
Let's take a look at the following sentence in Spanish.
Juan necesita la revista.
John is the subject of the sentence. He is the one who needs something. What does he need? In this sentence we see that he needs the magazine. That would be the direct object of this sentence. Now if we want to take out the phrase "the magazine" and replace it with a direct object pronoun we would have to follow these steps. First we remove the phrase, "la revista". Next, we use the word "la", which was used to mean "the" as our new direct object pronoun, which now would be translated as "it". The final step is to take the word "la" and move it in front of the verb. The sentence in Spanish would then look like this.
Juan la necesita.
This would be like saying in English, "John IT needs". Notice that in Spanish we will not always have a word for word translation of what we say in English. Often the word order will be different in Spanish. When we learn to speak another language, we must first learn to think in the patterns of the other language. We can't depend on English to give us all of the clues.
Now let's take a look at another sentence. This time we will use a plural noun as the direct object.
Juan necesita las revistas.
We are going to do the same thing now that we did in the other sentence. We will remove the phrase "las revistas" (the magazines) and keep the word "las" which was used to mean "the". If you stop and think about it, the plural form of "it" is "them". We are now going to say, "John needs them". We take the word "las" and once again, we move it in front of the verb. That will give us the following sentence.
Juan las necesita.
An exact word for word translation in English would be, "John THEM needs".
Let's see what happens if the noun which is used as the direct object is from the "O" category. Take a look at the following sentence.
Juan necesita los libros.
First we are going to drop the phrase, "los libros". We will keep the word "los" which previously meant "the" and move it in front of the verb. That would give us the following sentence in Spanish.
Juan los necesita.
Up to this point we can see a logical pattern developing. If we use an "O" category noun in the singular form, however, we will find that the situation gets a little bit more complicated.
Juan necesita el libro.
We would expect to take the word "el" and move it in front of the verb, after dropping the word "libro". In this case, however, that doesn't work. Instead of using "el" to mean "it" as a direct object, Spanish uses the word "lo". The sentence, "John needs it", would in this case be as follows.
Juan lo necesita.
This is an exception in the pattern that you have to learn. We could make a chart of the direct object pronouns in Spanish which are used when we replace nouns that represent things. It would look like this.
"O" NOUNS "A" NOUNS
SINGULAR LO LA
PLURAL LOS LAS
Take a good look at this chart and memorize it. These are the words which we will use to replace nouns that are used as direct objects when we are talking about things. You will find that we are going to be using these words a lot. They are, perhaps, among the most frequently used words in Spanish. No matter what you are talking about in a conversation, you will use direct object pronouns a lot. It's important to learn them well so that you can use them properly.
Category: Medical Spanish