Using the direct object pronouns le, la, l', les

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on June 21, 2012 at 12:39am

Je le deteste :             I hate him (or I hate it)

Je la deteste :             I hate her

Je les deteste:            I hate them

Je l'aime:                   I  love him (or I love her or I love it)

Je les aime:               I love them

 

You cannot say (for example)   "Je deteste le" or "Jaime les ". It has to be "Je le deteste" or "Je les aime".

That is the correct order

 

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Permalink Reply by DEYSI ANABELA CANCHIG on June 21, 2012 at 6:49pm

Hello George 

You are great, what an easy way of explaining this. 

Thank you very much

Deysi

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Permalink Reply by Ray on June 24, 2012 at 6:55pm

Is this for school? XD

Anyway, there are also me/te/nous/vous. (me/you/we/you (plural or formal)

For example, I help you is Je t'aide. I help it is Je l'aide. (See, they're close)

We help you is Nous vous aidons. (Make sure you conjugate it like that)

Objet indirect are lui/leur, and are used for things such as:

Je parle à quelqu'un -> Je lui parle

Je parle aux profs -> Je leur parle

me/te/nous/vous are both direct and indirect

Je te parle, for example.

Well, I'm just introducing some related concepts.

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Permalink Reply by Ray on June 24, 2012 at 6:56pm

In imperative form, do you place the objects before the verb?

Is the next sentenc/command correct?

Give it to him there->Donne-le-lui-y

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on June 25, 2012 at 12:07am

Usually in the positive imperative, but not the negative imperative, you put them after the verb as in your example. (There are actually non-standard forms where that isn't the case, e.g. "la ferme!", "vas-y pas!", but as I say, these are non-standard.)

There's a slight problem with your example, though. It turns out that lui and y are not generally combined. So while your sentence is completely logical in principle, in practice it wouldn't actually be used. In fact, y isn't used much at all in the positive imperative with another pronoun. So again, while logically speaking, you might expect people to say "Mets t'y" for "Sit there", "Place yourself there", in practice it would be rare. (You might actually hear the non-standard form "Mets-toi-z-y" but again, this isn't a standard form generally used by educated speakers.)

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