Forums > Specific Focus > Learning Spanish

jturpen

Jan 8, 2003, 11:56 AM

Post #1 of 7 (1875 views)

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se le lo and mo

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Respecting the right of all languages to have 'rules' ... why is it that 'Ahora se lo traigo todo’ is not ‘Ahora le lo traigo todo’ ... is the translation 'I'll bring all of that to you right away'?

Joe

Todd DF

Jan 8, 2003, 12:23 PM

Post #2 of 7 (1778 views)

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Re: [jturpen] se le lo and mo

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Whenever you have a direct and indirect pronoun in the same sentence that both begin with L you always change the first to se .

Go to this link for a further explanation of this. http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/iodopro.htm

buen suerte,

Todd

jturpen

Jan 9, 2003, 6:25 PM

Post #3 of 7 (1728 views)

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Re: [Todd DF] se le lo and mo

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Thanks Todd ...

I have this site bookmarked and have used it ... but I either did not get that far into the lessons or forgot that information. I will definitely use it as a resource.

Joe

Dave C.

Jan 10, 2003, 12:02 AM

Post #4 of 7 (1712 views)

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Re: [jturpen] se le lo and mo

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If I remember correctly, centuries ago there was a word like "ge" which meant "le" or "les". The soft G was pronounced like SH at the time ("she"), so the word got confused with the similar-sounding word "se" which eventually replaced it.

jturpen

Jan 10, 2003, 6:20 AM

Post #5 of 7 (1702 views)

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Re: [Dave C.] se le lo and mo

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Dave ...

It's difficult to determine if you are being 'clever' or if you actualy believe what you wrote. Thanks for the input ... BUT ... I have some good sources that provide a more rational logic as to why 'se' precedes 'lo' when in the context I offered.

Your story is ... well let's just say 'creative'?

Regards

Joe

Dave C.

Jan 11, 2003, 8:27 PM

Post #6 of 7 (1673 views)

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Re: [jturpen] se le lo and mo

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No, I didn't make it up; I've studied the evolution of the Romance languages. The word "ge" (or "ye" or however it was written centuries ago) is related to the Italian dative (indirect object) pronoun "glie" which is used similarly before other pronouns, both words apparently coming from the Latin dative pronoun ILLI. And yes, I've heard other explanations, such as: People say "se lo" instead of "le lo" because "lelo" means "stupid", or because "le lo" has too many L's in it for easy pronunciation.

jturpen

Jan 12, 2003, 8:07 AM

Post #7 of 7 (1700 views)

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Re: [Dave C.] se le lo and mo

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Hola DaveC ...

Thank you for the reply. I understand that languages have evolved and that words have lexicons of meaning that can be related to historic points in time. I have a degree from San Diego State University and within that area I studied some linguistics (part of an anthropology minor) so what you say is not totally foreign to my knowledge set.

Without spending time investigating to verify, which is not important to me, perhaps I should say that your offering was not the ordinary type of reply that I have received at this forum. Generally forum attendees restrict their information to current understandings, sometimes there are regional variations which create a bit of discussion/disagreement, but not one person that I have seen (only been reading this forum for a bit over one year) has offered an historic/linguistics slant on why a language rule is in effect.

While the study of languages from an historic perspective is interesting, at this forum I believe the objective is to understand/learn Spanish as it is today.

Thanks

Joe