Can i choose to use lui or le in this sentence 'I don't understand him'

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on September 21, 2012 at 2:57pm

No that would be incorrect. You use lui  in situations where the object of the verb is somehow indirect.

If you were to say 'Je ne lui comprends pas la timidité" (as an alternative to"Je ne comprends pas sa timidite" ) that could mean "I don't understand his/her shyness" where the object of the verb is timidité and lui is atached to timidité rather than the verb (comprendre).

More commonly you might say something like "Je lui ai donné un conseil important" and if someone was to reply " C'etait très important de le donner" that would mean that it was very important  to give it (the advice)

 

I hope I haven't made it seem more complicated than it is...

  .

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Key StudentPermalink Reply by Guy on September 29, 2012 at 6:22pm

Cool... thanks for the advice

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on September 30, 2012 at 12:23am

no problem!

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Key StudentPermalink Reply by Peter En on September 30, 2012 at 12:32pm

I don't know if this is right or not, but we were taught a very very general rule:

generally if you see à in the verb construct, you use lui  because à makes it indirect. If not then use le/les.

 

for example:

donner quelquechose à quelqu'un.

à is there: so thats lui

and if you wanted to go further, you could switch quelquechose to le as an indirect object.

Then comes the order of le and lui- as they are both 3rd person, it's direct object before indirect object like: je le lui donne. An easy pneumonic for this is D goes before I in the alphabet and hence Le goes before Lui.

In any other case however, it depends on whether or not if it is 1st person, 2nd person or 3rd person (I think)- if it is more personal than it is impersonal, that is, if its 2nd person, then it goes first, whereas the direct object

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