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Spanish Grammar/Indirect Object Pronouns
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indirect object pronounsmenosteosleles
The indirect object of a sentence is a noun or noun phrase that is secondarily affected by the action of a transitive verb, like "me" in sentence (1):
(1) She brings me the food.*
*In English, sentence (2) can also be phrased as:
(1a) She brings the food to me.
*In Spanish, this is expressed through either "Ella me trae la comida." or "Ella me trae la comida a mí."
The direct object and the indirect object are always nouns, noun phrases, or pronouns. Nouns and noun phrases can be replaced by pronouns:
(1) She brings it.
(2) She brings me the food.
(3) She brings me it.
(4) She brings it to me.
In Spanish, these sentences would look like this:
(1) Ella la trae.
(2) Ella me trae la comida.
(3) Ella la me trae.
(4) Ella me la trae.
When both direct and indirect object pronouns are being used in a sentence, the indirect object pronoun comes first:
(4) Ella me la trae.
Let's look at another example.
(1) Yo leí el libro.
(2) Yo le leí el libro (a la niña).
When
(3) Yo se lo leí.