A few weeks ago, I started to teach you Indirect Object Pronouns. Here’s the link to that first post: Indirect Object Pronouns in Spanish Part I.

As I explained in the last post, the information I am sharing here is from the scripts from our Digital Learning Center (DLC) course. If you purchase the DLC course, you will learn all kinds of info about Spanish grammar. You can find it on our Catalog page.

That said, here we go:

…Now let’s learn how to say the Spanish indirect object pronouns and how to use them in sentences in Spanish.

Are you ready?

If you’ve gone through the Direct Objects lesson, you may have noticed that the only difference between direct object and indirect object pronouns in that we use “le” and “les” instead of “lo”, “la” “los” and “las” (bottom row).

Now let’s see how they work in Spanish – As we go through these examples, notice how, unlike English, the Indirect Objects in Spanish come before the verb.

“She gives the money to me” changes to

Me da el dinero

“We send letters to him” changes to

Le mandamos las cartas

“She asks a favor of him” changes to

Le pide un favor

“They tell secrets to her” changes to

Le dicen secretos

“He writes emails to us” changes to

Nos escribe emails

“I throw the ball to them” changes to

Les tiro la pelota

“I deliver the packages to you – informal” changes to

Te entrego los paquetes

Hopefully now you have the basic idea of how indirect objects work. If this idea still seems pretty new to you, you may want to review it again.

Next we’ll move on to a new concept and learn how to put Direct Object and Indirect Object Pronouns together in the same sentence.

Now, if you’ve seen the Direct Object lesson, you learned how to use Direct Object Pronouns (if not, I recommend watching it). We’ll review them for a minute now.

They are:

In this lesson, we’ll only focus on objects or items so we’ll only need the bottom row of Direct Objects. In other words, we don’t need to use the top ones then putting together direct and indirect object pronouns.

As a quick review, we’ll take another look at the Indirect Object Pronouns.

First of all, when you put a “Direct Object Pronoun” and an “Indirect Object Pronoun” together, the “Indirect Object Pronoun”, representing a person, always comes first. And the “Direct Object Pronoun”, representing an item or object, comes second.

Well Amigos, that does it for today.

I hope you’re all having fun getting ready for Navidad (Christmas).

¡Felices Fiestas! (Happy Holidays!)

Here is a partial script from an interactive lesson in our Spanish Digital Learning Center (DLC).

In order to learn “Indirect Object pronouns”, first we need to briefly review what a “Direct Object” is. Direct Objects are the “First goal or action of a verb”. The best way to learn what that means is to look at a few examples.

The first one is: “She gives the money”. Here the verb is “gives” and “the money” is the “Direct Object”. It receives the action of the verb – it’s “what” She gives. In Spanish, this would be said “Ella da el dinero”. The “ella” is optional.

See if you can pick out the “Direct Objects” in the next few examples. Just a hint, the “Direct Object” will turn blue a second after the sentence is said (Note: this only happens in the interactive lesson). Try to pick it out before it turns blue.

We send letters:  Now in Spanish – Mandamos las cartas

She asks for a favor: Now in Spanish – Pide un favor

They tell secrets: Now in Spanish – Dicen secretos

I throw the ball: Now in Spanish – Tiro la pelota

I deliver the packages: Now in Spanish – Entrego los paquetes

Were you able to guess the direct objects? Remember, they receive the action of the verb.

Now you’ve had a brief review of Direct Objects, let’s add Indirect Objects to these sentences. An “Indirect Object” is the secondary goal or action of the verb.

An example of this is:

She gives the money to me – In this sentence, “the money” is the first action of the verb; it’s what “she gives”. And, “to me” is the secondary action of the verb. “She’s giving the money…to me”.

Now we’ll look at a few more. The next one is:

We send letters to him – In this sentence, “letters” is the first action or goal of the verb, or the “direct object”  – it’s what “we send”, and “to him” is the second action of the verb or the “indirect object” – in other words, “we’re sending letters – to him”.

She asks for a favor of him – “Favor” is the “direct object” and “of him” is the “indirect object”

They tell secrets to her – “secrets” is the “direct object” and “to her” is the “indirect object”

Now we’ll look at 3 more examples. See if you can pick out the “direct” and “indirect objects”. After about 1 second, the Direct Object will turn blue and after another second the Indirect Object will turn red (this only happens in the actual interactive lessons). Are you ready?

He writes emails to us

I throw the ball to them

I deliver the packages to you

Were you able to guess the direct objects and indirect objects?

This concludes Part I of indirect object pronouns in Spanish. Stay tuned next Wednesday for Part II!

If you want learn with more in-depth free lessons now (that teach you how to build sentences), try our free Spanish lessons online.

For more on the course this script comes from, click on our Spanish Digital Learning Center.

¡Hasta luego Amigos!