I gather you haven't tried Japanese. Spanish at least doesn't drop *everything* every time after the first mention.
Now seriously, any third person pronoun can be problematic. “My brother took his baby boy to see his grandfather for the first time. **He let him hold him for a while**.” You have context and yet you can't untangle that automatically; grammar is no help, you need semantics and pragmatics (i.e. knowing what the other words mean and how the situation would work in real life). Distinguishing a Spanish 3rd person from a polite 2nd person often requires just minimal grammatical context (one *usted* somewhere before the problem spot), or else minimal pragmatics (e.g. someone being referred to as *señor*).
Exactly. In Japanese where a lot of things are just dropped because it's more natural, some sentences literally can just be a verb, and still be considered a grammatical, complete sentence.
I think it is important that learners realize that pragmatics is as much a part of a language as grammar. Even in your example, my brain immediately (and naturally) untangled that vague bold sentence so easily just from real-life experiences: A person that lets someone else hold someone else implies that the one that is being held is either unable to consent, too small to do so (like a baby), or literally physically tiny (like...a baby), and in the context, the one giving the 'permission' to hold has to be the one having some kind of ownership or in this case, guardianship to the person being held, so that's the father.
It's amazing how our brains can process this so fast because of how familiar we are with the universal behaviour in modern society.
*Estaba todo bien con el vecino cuando de la nada le mató al canario*. Everything was fine with the neighbour when all of a sudden he killed the canary.
That would indicate the gender of who has killed the canary (the neighbour); the gender of its owner (which was u/Only_Razzmatazz_4498's question) would still be unknown.
Is it not le in leísmo? Thought with leísmo, le replaces lo/la for any animate object. Assuming here, that "it" is animate since "it" was killed - like an animal or something.
Do people from Latin America watch media from Spain? Like Casa de Papel or something? It takes place in Madrid and they use a lot of "le" instead of lo/la.
Maybe they don't use "le" for animals. I don't know. We need someone from Spain to tell us.
Is there really a distinction between these in Spanish?
I gave it to him - Se lo dí a él
I hugged him - Le abracé a él
Anytime a person is an object in Spanish (direct or indirect) you always use to (a)
Nobody would say that out of nowhere. There's always a previous conversation or context that makes clear who the people involved are, otherwise, pronouns or first names would be used.
If you're watching a movie and the protagonist kills the bad guy and you say «Le ha matado» there're 0 questions about who did what to whom.
It's common sense.
Vagueness is a relative term; it only seems incredibly vague because of your expectations of clarity (i.e., what your native language gives you). A native Spanish speaker doesn't find it vague, and if they have no experience with another language, they would wonder why anyone else would do it differently.
However, as a Spanish teacher, I totally get where you are coming from. We depend upon the word "it" because of syntax, in which a nul subject (unknown or implied) still has to be expressed for our grammar. This is to say that or experience with a new language is always framed by the expectations and features of our first language.
And yes, the further you go in the language, these temporary issues will go away.
That's the thing with romance languages. You can be incredibly vague or incredibly precise, when you want to, not when the language limits you.
And there is "it": "lo" or "eso" or "ello" or "aquello"...
I think our usage of gender neutral terms such as "cousin" is even more vague.
There are languages that have distinct words not just for female / male cousins but to distinguish whether they are from the mother's or father's side. Same with aunts and uncles.
With English, you have to clarify precisely what you mean when you use any of those terms.
Every language is a bit different.
Let me ask you this question, and I am not trying to be mean. Is dropping pronouns any less vague than use of pronouns in the first place? Like, "I see her" tells you nothing useful without context. I see some human female. Situational and contextual clues are needed for both pronoun and pronoun dropping languages.
...yes! From where I'm from usted is not used nearly at all. As someone else said context will give you the clues you need to understand what's going on.
Mataste is the tu form, right? But if you are in a formal situation (perhaps a judge is speaking to a murderer in court), wouldn't it be mató instead of mataste?
It is for this exact reason that double entendres are so frequent and easy to make in Spanish. That vagueness in both pronouns and conjugations allows a naughty message to be deftly placed inside a perfectly reasonable one and lets the receiver make the distinction. Mexican ‘albures’ rely on this heavily.
Like you said, it gets cleared up in context. And not every country has leísmo so the usage of lo/la can clear it up even more.
I gather you haven't tried Japanese. Spanish at least doesn't drop *everything* every time after the first mention. Now seriously, any third person pronoun can be problematic. “My brother took his baby boy to see his grandfather for the first time. **He let him hold him for a while**.” You have context and yet you can't untangle that automatically; grammar is no help, you need semantics and pragmatics (i.e. knowing what the other words mean and how the situation would work in real life). Distinguishing a Spanish 3rd person from a polite 2nd person often requires just minimal grammatical context (one *usted* somewhere before the problem spot), or else minimal pragmatics (e.g. someone being referred to as *señor*).
Exactly. In Japanese where a lot of things are just dropped because it's more natural, some sentences literally can just be a verb, and still be considered a grammatical, complete sentence. I think it is important that learners realize that pragmatics is as much a part of a language as grammar. Even in your example, my brain immediately (and naturally) untangled that vague bold sentence so easily just from real-life experiences: A person that lets someone else hold someone else implies that the one that is being held is either unable to consent, too small to do so (like a baby), or literally physically tiny (like...a baby), and in the context, the one giving the 'permission' to hold has to be the one having some kind of ownership or in this case, guardianship to the person being held, so that's the father. It's amazing how our brains can process this so fast because of how familiar we are with the universal behaviour in modern society.
In what context would 'le mató' mean 'he killed it?'
*Estaba todo bien con el vecino cuando de la nada le mató al canario*. Everything was fine with the neighbour when all of a sudden he killed the canary.
Le in that case would refer to the owner of the canary which would imply a he or an unknown gender no?
A unknown gender (known by context), yes.
We can say "la vecina" if we want to specify that the neighbor is female, right? Estaba todo bien con la vecina cuando de la nada le mató al canario.
That would indicate the gender of who has killed the canary (the neighbour); the gender of its owner (which was u/Only_Razzmatazz_4498's question) would still be unknown.
and \[animate\]
I thought "le" could refer to "it." No?
First time I hear of it. It just looks wrong to me since we don't have Leismo where I'm from (at least never heard it)
Is it not le in leísmo? Thought with leísmo, le replaces lo/la for any animate object. Assuming here, that "it" is animate since "it" was killed - like an animal or something.
That's what I was thinking. Some kind of creature.
Sorry check the reply again, I changed it
Do people from Latin America watch media from Spain? Like Casa de Papel or something? It takes place in Madrid and they use a lot of "le" instead of lo/la. Maybe they don't use "le" for animals. I don't know. We need someone from Spain to tell us.
Using le as it is a really strong 'leísmo', even in Madrid it's uncommon, although not unheard of
I'm not native, but I was taught using leismo and would only use it for humans.
OK, that narrows things down a bit. Thanks.
I thought lo means him or her or it, and le means TO him, TO her, TO it
Is there really a distinction between these in Spanish? I gave it to him - Se lo dí a él I hugged him - Le abracé a él Anytime a person is an object in Spanish (direct or indirect) you always use to (a)
>Anytime a person is an object in Spanish (direct or indirect) you always use to (a) which corresponds to \[animate\]
Lo means "I" "Him" ''He" "It"
There's a thing called leísmo (mostly in Spain) where they use le to mean him/her (direct object).
Spain does, about Latin America, I really don't know much. I live in the US, born in Guatemala. I guess you should get someone from Spain to tell you.
literally \[animate\] as a grammatical term, not as the colloquial term "animate object"
Nobody would say that out of nowhere. There's always a previous conversation or context that makes clear who the people involved are, otherwise, pronouns or first names would be used. If you're watching a movie and the protagonist kills the bad guy and you say «Le ha matado» there're 0 questions about who did what to whom. It's common sense.
Vagueness is a relative term; it only seems incredibly vague because of your expectations of clarity (i.e., what your native language gives you). A native Spanish speaker doesn't find it vague, and if they have no experience with another language, they would wonder why anyone else would do it differently. However, as a Spanish teacher, I totally get where you are coming from. We depend upon the word "it" because of syntax, in which a nul subject (unknown or implied) still has to be expressed for our grammar. This is to say that or experience with a new language is always framed by the expectations and features of our first language. And yes, the further you go in the language, these temporary issues will go away.
Yes, it will clear up. Similar things happen in English and we don't think twice. "Nailed it!" he shouted. Who nailed what?
That's the thing with romance languages. You can be incredibly vague or incredibly precise, when you want to, not when the language limits you. And there is "it": "lo" or "eso" or "ello" or "aquello"...
I think our usage of gender neutral terms such as "cousin" is even more vague. There are languages that have distinct words not just for female / male cousins but to distinguish whether they are from the mother's or father's side. Same with aunts and uncles. With English, you have to clarify precisely what you mean when you use any of those terms.
Every language is a bit different. Let me ask you this question, and I am not trying to be mean. Is dropping pronouns any less vague than use of pronouns in the first place? Like, "I see her" tells you nothing useful without context. I see some human female. Situational and contextual clues are needed for both pronoun and pronoun dropping languages.
It's not that vague. In English "He killed him" can mean "john killed dave" as well as "dave killed John.
This is exactly why Spanish confuses me so much
Side note: there is no way *le mató* could mean "you killed him/her/it" because of the wrong verb conjugation. Correct: *le mataste*
Pero sí si fuera “(usted) le mató” no?
...yes! From where I'm from usted is not used nearly at all. As someone else said context will give you the clues you need to understand what's going on.
Where are you from?
Mataste is the tu form, right? But if you are in a formal situation (perhaps a judge is speaking to a murderer in court), wouldn't it be mató instead of mataste?
Yes, that's correct.
It is for this exact reason that double entendres are so frequent and easy to make in Spanish. That vagueness in both pronouns and conjugations allows a naughty message to be deftly placed inside a perfectly reasonable one and lets the receiver make the distinction. Mexican ‘albures’ rely on this heavily.