How to Use Pronouns in Spanish?

Hola, amigos, ¿cómo están? I'm Hannah from Speak Better Spanish. Today we're going to be talking about the difference between se, le, lo, and la. I know those pronouns are really confusing, and even though we might sometimes understand how they're used, using them on our own when we're creating sentences, not only in terms of where do we even put them in the sentence, but what do they mean and what's the difference between them, is actually really confusing, and I totally understand. It's normal for that to be confusing when you're learning Spanish.

There's a resource that I like to use on this topic. It's the Practice Makes Perfect, Practice Makes Perfect Pronouns and Prepositions workbook that I usually get on Amazon. You can get a digital copy or a paperback copy, and they're usually around $20. It's a really good resource. It has chapters on each of these, and I'm going to give you today just kind of a high level overview on what each of those categories of pronouns are and how we're going to use them, but it's definitely something that I usually spend quite a few classes on with my students, just really working on, because I really would love to see my students feel comfortable, fully comfortable with a subject before we move on, and this is a particularly difficult subject.

So if you are confused about it, you are not alone. Okay, let's just dive into it. So the first category that I usually go over is our reflexive object pronouns. So you might have learned these before if you've ever studied reflexive verbs. Reflexive verbs are when we have, or we use a reflexive verb or a reflexive object pronoun when the person doing the action and the person receiving the action are the same person. We see these a lot with hygiene, explanations of hygiene and daily routine type of items.

For example, yo me levanto a las seis. So I wake up, or I wake myself up, or get up really, at six. Yo me baño. I bathe myself. You bathe yourself, and so on. So that may that day and other types of pronouns that fall in that category. So it's me, te, se, nos, os, and se are reflexive object pronouns. We use those, as I said, when the person doing the action and the person receiving the action are the same. Now, these verbs that we often see with reflexive object pronouns do exist in a non-reflexive form.

For example, if I bathe my cat, yo baño a mi gato. I don't know why you would want to do that, but if you did, if I bathe my cat, right, it's not reflexive because I'm the one doing the bathing and my cat is the one receiving the bathing. Since those are not the same, we don't use the reflexive object pronoun. That doesn't mean that bañarse doesn't exist as a reflexive verb. It just depends on the context as to when we would need to put those reflexive object pronouns in. So that's the first category, reflexive object pronouns.

Remember, person doing the action, the person receiving the action are the same: me, te, se, nos, os, se. Then we have our direct object pronouns, which are me, te, lo, la, nos, os, los, and las. Those tell us who or what is receiving the action of the verb. For example, I buy the food. Who or what do I buy? The food. So if I wanted to make a sentence and say I buy it, where it is the food, then it would be a direct object pronoun, so taking the place of the direct object, of the food. And we can have different types of direct objects, obviously.

We can have singular, plural, we can have people, we can have things, and based on that we'll choose between the pronouns me, te, lo, la, nos, os, los, and las. And we're usually going to put these pronouns the same as the reflexive pronouns. We're going to put them before our conjugated verb most of the time. There are a few situations where we will attach to the end of a verb, but we're going to talk about that at the end of this video. All right, the next category that we talk about is the indirect object pronouns.

So these tell us to whom or for whom. These are not super common, but we do see them from time to time. Sometimes we'll see them together with direct object pronouns, sometimes on their own. So an example would be, I buy the flowers for María. So if I say I buy it for her, then it is the direct object pronoun taking the place of the flowers, which is who or what is being verbed, and for her or for María, her is taking the place of María, who is the indirect object pronoun. Her, indirect object pronoun.

María, indirect object. So that would look like we're going to put our indirect object pronoun first, then direct object pronoun, then verb. So, oh, and this changes. Alright, so when we have the double object pronoun, so both indirect and direct in the same sentence, if the indirect object pronoun, which is me, te, le, nos, os, and les, if it's le or les, we change it to se when it's followed by a direct object pronoun. So se las compro, las being las flores, the flowers, se being for María, her, and compro being I buy.

I get it, that is a lot. That's a lot of information, it's a lot of categories, they sound similar, it's confusing. I know, this is why I usually spend several classes covering this information with my students. If you're interested in diving a little bit deeper into this and you'd like someone to help you in the process, I'm happy to do so. Feel free to book a consultation in the link below and we can chat more about what that might look like, get a couple of classes scheduled out to talk about this type of content.

Or if you want to try it on your own, you can definitely check out that workbook I recommended. Now, I mentioned previously that there are a few situations where we can put our pronouns, whether that be reflexive, direct object or indirect object. There are a few other categories of pronouns that we use, but these are kind of the most common ones and the ones that tend to be the most confusing. We can put those actually attached to our verb, and that happens in three scenarios. First scenario, we have an infinitive verb.

Why would we have an infinitive verb in the sentence? If we have two verbs in a row, we conjugate the first verb, we leave the second verb in the infinitive. This happens regardless of pronouns, right? This is a general rule in Spanish. When we happen to have this category, we can either attach the pronoun to the end of the infinitive, or we can place it before the conjugated verb. For example, yo quiero comprarlo, yo lo quiero comprar. I want to buy it. Both are acceptable. You will hear a lot of native speakers attaching.

It's not wrong to place it before, but a lot of times native speakers will attach our pronouns. We can even attach more than one pronoun in a row to the same word. So first category where we can attach, infinitive verb. Second category is going to be affirmative commands. Like, probably heard this before: dámelo, dímelo, hazlo. Tell it to me, give it to me, do it. We can attach that it, or that it and to me, because it's an affirmative command. We can't attach if it's a negative command. No lo hagas.

Don't do it. Can't attach. And the third category is when we have the present progressive or any of our progressive tenses. For example, estoy estudiando. I am studying. We can say estoy estudiándolo. I am studying it. This causes us to have to put an accent mark in a syllable in the middle of the word in order to keep the pronunciation the same, because now we have an additional syllable in the word. I am studying it. Estoy estudiándolo. We can also place that lo, or any of those pronouns, before the conjugated verb, so lo estoy estudiando.

Both are correct. I know this is a really long explanation. Don't worry if it sounds confusing. It is, and it just takes practice, like anything. The more that you practice it, the more comfortable you'll get, the easier it'll come. And it might, it might feel a little overwhelming, but that's very normal. You can work through the workbook, or feel free to schedule a consultation with me and we can chat more about it. Thanks for watching, guys.