If the lesson I gave over subjects and objects isn't fresh in your mind, let's go over it again. A subject in a sentence is the noun that is doing the verb. The object is the noun that is having the verb done to it. Consider:
She kicks the soccer ball.
Who kicks the soccer ball? "She", whoever that is. She is the subject. What does she kick? The soccer ball. That's the object.
Each language has a combination of the order of their subjects, objects, and verbs in a sentence. In English, we operate by the subject-verb-object syntax or word arrangement. In Irish, they operate by verb-subject-object. But in Spanish, we go by subject-object-verb. How crazy is that! Let's see some examples.
Mis amigos me alcanzan. ｜My friends catch up to me.
Lo como. ｜I eat it.
It may seem confusing at first, but you'll get used to it eventually. And now it's time for our handy object pronoun charts! Below are the object pronouns for each person. English is on the left and Spanish is on the right:
Me ｜Me (be careful with this one! It's pronounced "Meh", not "mee". "Mee" means "mine").
You ｜Te
Him ｜Either le or lo (In Spain, they say "le" to refer to a male person and "lo" for a masculine object. I personally prefer le over lo.)
Her ｜La
You (formal) ｜Le or La
It ｜La or Lo (Used for feminine and masculine objects respectively)
Us ｜Nos
You all (vosotros) ｜Os (don't worry about this; it's only used in Spain)
You all (ustedes) / Ellos & Ellas ｜Los or las
But wait! There are a few more things. First off, what about indirect objects? What are indirect objects?
I give the notebook to him.
Both the notebook and him are objects! But him is indirect because it shows where the object is going. A way to test indirect objects in English is to take the last object off the sentence and see if it still works. If so, it's an indirect object.
Yo doy las llaves a él. ｜I give the keys to him.
Notice how we don't use an object pronoun, but rather "a" followed by the subject pronoun. This goes for all the indirect objects except for me and te.
Tú das las llaves a mí. ｜You give the keys to me.
Me changes to mí when there is a preposition before it. Because a is a preposition meaning "to", mí qualifies here. It is the same with te, except it becomes ti instead.
There is one more thing to cover here, and that is the topic of reflexive pronouns. In English, reflexive pronouns are myself, yourself, himself, etc. In Spanish, however, reflexive pronouns are almost exactly the same as regular object pronouns.
Me lavo. ｜I wash myself.
Te llamas. ｜You call yourself.
Since you are both the object and the subject, the conjugations and object pronouns will line up.
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Language Bites, Volume I: Spanish ✔
Non-FictionEver wanted to learn Spanish? Are you stuck on past tense preterite, are you tired of stupid teaching methods, or needed to practice your vocabulary? What about strengthening your conversational skills through interacting online with real people who...
