(no subject)

[ysobel]

...ok I'm kinda confused.

Duo gave me a sentence that included "we have to thank him" (tenemos que agradecerle) and my brain screeched to a halt over the indirect object (-le, not -lo). English doesn't have different indirect/direct pronouns, but "him" sure felt like a direct object. Subject thanks object. And I looked it up and agredecer is a transitive verb, so why the pronoun...

???

Note to self, look that up.

Incidentally, helpful note for Duo folk: for refrigerator-magnet questions, where you're assembling sentences from provided words, there seem to always be four items left over. This won't help you find the *right* words, but e.g. if you have five left you probably left a word out.

...now if only there were a word count on freeform entry, lol. I have a bad habit of dropping estar (to be) from sentences structured as "to-be verbing". Duo asked for "we are buying them a ticket" and I typed "comprándoles un boleto" instead of "estamos comprándoles un boleto". Oops.

Comments

[zhelana]

transative verbs almost always have le pronouns with them. "me, te, le, nos, os, les" from what I understand it's because you can't do the thing without doing it to yourself or someone else. It's not the same le as the indirect object, though.

[ysobel]

Thanks, that's helpful -- especially unpairing it from indirect-object-ness. I am ok with "all verbs take le" or "some verbs take le", it was literally just my brain balking at "how is this an IO"/

From what I can tell, Spanish has direct objects for "verb acts on this" and a separate thing for "verb acts to/for a person, or ... something IDK. Object vs person? Something. I'll get it eventually, I'm just having a hard time with when to use la/lo and when to use le, but it's hardly critical :)

[zhelana]

If it helps, everyone in my advanced spanish class still fucks up transitive verbs at least 25% of the time. I did it today with "I will get a free haircut for Veterans Day" And we're in level 8 of 9 total.