Indirect Object Pronouns in Spanish: Our complete how-to guide

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Whether you’re speaking in English or Spanish, you need to know the full range of personal pronouns to use in different parts of a sentence. In Spanish, indirect object pronouns are used similarly to their English counterparts, with a few important differences.

In today’s post, we’ll take an in-depth look at indirect object pronouns in Spanish. We’ll start by making sure you know what indirect objects are, comparing them in both English and Spanish. Once we’ve learned the six indirect object pronouns in Spanish, we’ll see how to use them in common sentence structures. Then we get into more advanced sentence structures, starting with how to use both indirect and direct object pronouns in the same sentence.

As always, we’ll use plenty of examples to help you understand every point.

This is a fully updated post, covering more of the advanced aspects of how to use indirect object pronouns in Spanish than you’ll find in most online resources. You can certainly get by fine with the basics we cover early on in the post, but if you’re looking for a complete lesson on when to use indirect object pronouns in Spanish, you’ve come to the right place!

What are indirect objects?

Before we go any further, let’s just make sure you’re clear on what indirect objects are. Indirect objects in a sentence tell us to whom or for whom the verb’s action is done. This is in contrast to the direct objects, which are being acted on directly by the verb. Let’s see this with a simple example in English:

Juan buys flowers for his girlfriend.

The verb here is buy. What is Juan buying? Flowers. That’s the direct object. And for whom is he buying them? His girlfriend, which is the indirect object in this sentence.

Now what if we want to use an indirect object pronoun here instead of the noun?

Juan buys flowers for her.

Juan buys her flowers.

The indirect object pronoun in this example is her.

Let’s see the full set of English indirect object pronouns:

Grammatical person	Singular	Plural
First-person	me	us
Second-person	you	you
Third-person	him, her, it	them

Keep in mind that in English, you use these same words as both direct object pronouns and indirect object pronouns. In Spanish, it’s important to differentiate between the two sets of words depending on where they fall in a sentence, which is why it’s so important to understand what indirect objects are in the first place.

Now that we’re clear on what indirect objects are, and we’ve seen the English indirect object pronouns, we’re ready to move on to the Spanish versions.

The six indirect object pronouns in Spanish

First of all, what are the six indirect object pronouns in Spanish?

Grammatical person	Singular	Plural
First-person	me	nos
Second-person	te	os
Third-person	le*	les*

*The third-person indirect object pronouns in Spanish can change to se in specific sentence structures when used with direct object pronouns. We’ll get to this when we reach that section below.

Now let’s see the six indirect object pronouns in Spanish, alongside their corresponding subject pronouns in English and Spanish. If you’re not already clear on these, please start with our intro post on subject pronouns in Spanish.

Subject pronouns, English	Subject pronouns, Spanish	Indirect object pronouns, Spanish
I	yo	me
you (informal)	tú	te
he she it you (formal)	él ella él/ella usted	le le le le
we we (feminine)	nosotros nosotras	nos nos
you (plural) you (plural feminine)	vosotros vosotras	os os
they they (feminine) you (plural)	ellos ellas ustedes	les les les

Remember that in Spanish grammar, usted and ustedes act as third-person pronouns. Likewise, the second-person plural pronouns vosotros and vosotras are only really used in Spain, with ustedes being the only form of plural you used in Latin American Spanish. We explain all of this in detail in the subject pronoun post we mentioned above, as well as in our post on the different words for you in Spanish.

Also keep in mind that unlike English, there’s no differentiation by gender with Spanish indirect object pronouns. Since we only consider the grammatical person, the singular third-person indirect object pronoun le, for example, could be referring to him, her, it, or even you if we’re talking about usted.

Juan le compra flores. – Juan buys flowers for her.
Juan le compra flores. – Juan buys flowers for him.
Juan le compra flores. – Juan buys flowers for it.
Juan le compra flores. – Juan buys flowers for you (formal).

This can obviously cause confusion if there’s no other information, so it’s important to pay attention to context to know who or what the Spanish indirect object pronoun refers to.

How to identify an indirect object in a sentence: Para and A

Spanish sentences have two telltale prepositions that help us to identify the indirect object: para and a. These little words precede the person or thing that receives the benefit of the verb’s action, usually translating as for, to, or at.

Ella cocina la cena para su esposo. – She cooks dinner for her husband.
El maestro distribuye los exámenes a los estudiantes. – The teacher distributes the exams to the students.
El granjero tira piedras a los pájaros. – The farmer throws rocks at the birds.

Easy, right? When you see para or a pointing to the person or thing that the verb’s action is being done to, for, or at, you’ve identified the indirect object in Spanish.

In case you’re not familiar with these essential prepositions, be aware that when used before a singular masculine noun, we contract a el to al. We cover this in detail in our post on Spanish contractions.

Ella lanza una manzana al caballo. – She throws an apple to the horse.

Now we’re ready to use these building blocks to see all the sentence structures where we use indirect object pronouns in Spanish.

Where do indirect object pronouns go in Spanish?

In different contexts, where do you put indirect object pronouns in Spanish? Let’s take a look at the simplest sentence structures to understand the fundamentals, and then move on to some of the more complicated structures.

The basics

In the simplest sentences, the Spanish indirect object pronouns are placed right before the conjugated verb. This placement is often similar to the English examples we saw earlier:

Juan compra flores a su novia. – Juan buys flowers for his girlfriend.
Juan le compra flores. – Juan buys her flowers.

Ella cocina la cena para su esposo. – She cooks dinner for her husband.
Ella le cocina la cena. – He cooks him dinner.

The Spanish indirect object pronoun always goes before the conjugated verb, even where the English equivalent still needs the preposition:

El maestro les distribuye los exámenes. – The teacher distributes the exams to them.

El granjero les tira piedras. – The farmer throws rocks at them.

Finally, where the indirect object pronouns are vague in who they’re referring to, namely with le and les, we often still include the indirect object at the end of the sentence for clarity. We still use the pronoun in the placement we just saw, while also adding the actual noun after the preposition a:

Juan le compra flores a su novia. – Juan buys flowers for his girlfriend.

Ella le cocina la cena a su esposo. – She cooks dinner for her husband.

El maestro les distribuye los exámenes a los estudiantes. – The teacher distributes the exams to the students.

El granjero les tira piedras a los pájaros. – The farmer throws rocks at the birds.

Note that when we’ve used the indirect object pronoun in the sentence like this, we can’t use para when we identify the noun, even in sentences where we would have used para without the pronoun. This construction always just uses a + indirect object.

Let’s finish this section with a set of Spanish sentences where we include both the pronoun and the a clause to identify four different third-person singular indirect objects, all of which take the pronoun le:

Juan le compra flores a su novia. – Juan buys flowers for his girlfriend.
Juan le compra flores a su abuelo. – Juan buys flowers for his grandfather.
Juan le compra flores a su tortuga. – Juan buys flowers for his turtle.
Juan le compra flores a usted. – Juan buys flowers for you (formal).

Indirect object pronoun + Conjugated verb

This is the most common sentence structure, so it’s the most important one you need to know. As we’ve seen in all of our examples so far, the indirect object pronoun always goes directly before the conjugated verb like this:

[indirect object pronoun] + [conjugated verb]

This is the word order, regardless of the tense the verb is conjugated to. Let’s see a few more examples showing a couple of tenses:

Mis sobrinas están con su abuela. Les cuenta historias interesantes. – My nieces are with their grandmother. She is telling them interesting stories.
Mi hijo me regaló un vestido hermoso. – My son gave me a beautiful dress.
El barista nos dirá la contraseña del wifi. – The barista will tell us the wifi password.

Indirect object pronoun + Compound conjugation

Compound conjugations in Spanish are built using a conjugation of the auxiliary verb haber, followed by the past participle of the action verb. When these action verbs take indirect objects, the Spanish indirect object pronoun is placed before the conjugated form of haber like this:

[indirect object pronoun] + [conjugated form of haber] + [past participle]

Nos has escrito muchas veces. – You have written to us many times.
¿Te han enviado el paquete ya? – Have they sent you the package yet?
Para cuando mis padres lleguen de visita, les habré preparado un itinerario completo. – By the time my parents arrive for their visit, I will have prepared a full itinerary for them.

Indirect object pronoun + Infinitive verb

We frequently use two-verb combinations to express a more complex set of actions, where the first verb is conjugated and the second verb is in the infinitive form. In these sentences, the indirect object is associated with the infinitive verb rather than the conjugated verb.

Here we have two options for using indirect object pronouns in Spanish that are both grammatically correct and mean the same thing. The choice often comes down to style, rhythm, or emphasis, though the first of the two is a bit more common: either the indirect object pronoun is attached directly to the end of the infinitive verb, or it’s placed before the conjugated verb.

Here are the two formats, followed by a series of examples showing both options:

[conjugated verb] + [infinitive][indirect object pronoun]

[indirect object pronoun] + [conjugated verb] + [infinitive]

Necesito contarte un secreto. – Te necesito contar un secreto. – I need to tell you a secret.
Deberías darle una oportunidad. – Le deberías dar una oportunidad. – You should give her a chance.
Piensan contarnos todo mañana. – Nos piensan contar todo mañana. – They plan to tell us everything tomorrow.
Queremos decirles la verdad. – Les queremos decir la verdad. – We want to tell you (plural) the truth.

This same rule applies when we talk about the near future in Spanish using variants of voy a plus infinitives. We either attach the pronoun to the end of the infinitive, or we place it before the conjugated form of the verb ir.

Van a enviarme los resultados. – Me van a enviar los resultados. – They’re going to send me the results.
Voy a prestarles mis apuntes. – Les voy a prestar mis apuntes. – I’m going to lend them my notes.

Indirect object pronoun + Present progressive

The present progressive is used when something is happening at the moment of speaking. In Spanish we build the present progressive by conjugating estar and following it with the gerund of the action verb. The English equivalent uses the -ing form, like “I am reading,” or “you are talking.”

When the action verb in the present progressive takes an indirect object, we have the same two options as we just saw with infinitives: either attached to the end of the gerund, or just before the conjugated form of estar. Again, attaching the pronoun to the gerund is a bit more common, but either form is correct.

[estar, conjugated] + [gerund][indirect object pronoun]

[indirect object pronoun] + [estar, conjugated] + [gerund]

Estoy comprándole un regalo. – Le estoy comprando un regalo. – I am buying her a gift.
Están explicándonos las reglas. – Nos están explicando las reglas. – They are explaining the rules to us.
Abuela está leyéndoles un cuento. – Abuela les está leyendo un cuento. – Grandma is reading them a story.
Estamos diciéndoles la verdad. – Les estamos diciendo la verdad. – We are telling you (plural) the truth.

We’re getting into advanced territory here, since the gerunds in the first sentence structure take an additional accent when the pronoun is attached. This ensures consistent pronunciation of the conjugated verb, with just the additional syllable added on by the pronoun. We explain this rule in our post on Spanish accent marks, while we go into a lot more detail on the phenomenon in our post about syllables in Spanish.

Indirect object pronoun + Negative form

If you’ve mastered all the sentence structures we’ve seen so far, expressing any of them in the negative form is easy. We just add no at the beginning of any of the structures we’ve already seen, and it becomes negative! The placement of the indirect object pronouns doesn’t change.

Let’s see some of the same examples from each of the previous sections to see how they appear in the negative form. Where there are two options, we show both:

Juan no le compra flores a su novia. – Juan does not buy flowers for his girlfriend.
El barista no nos dirá la contraseña del wifi. – The barista will not tell us the wifi password.
No nos has escrito muchas veces. – You have not written to us many times.
No deberías darle una oportunidad. – No le deberías dar una oportunidad. – You should not give her a chance.
No van a enviarme los resultados. – No me van a enviar los resultados. – They’re not going to send me the results.
No estamos diciéndoles la verdad. – No les estamos diciendo la verdad. – We are not telling you (plural) the truth.

Indirect object pronoun + Imperative mood

Including indirect objects is fairly common when we give orders, so where do indirect object pronouns go in Spanish commands? When we use the imperative mood in the affirmative, we attach the pronoun directly to the end of the conjugated verb. Just as we saw above when we attached the pronoun to the gerund, we need to add an accent mark to the command to keep the pronunciation consistent.

[affirmative imperative conjugation][indirect object pronoun]

Muéstrame cómo se hace. – Show me how it’s done.
Tráenos algo de beber. – Bring us something to drink.
Préstale tu móvil. – Lend her your phone.
Enséñales la foto. – Show them the photo.

When we’re addressing tú, the imperative mood uses different conjugations with negative commands. The indirect object pronoun is not attached to the end of the verb here, and instead goes between no and the negative imperative conjugation.

no + [indirect object pronoun] + [negative imperative conjugation]

No me muestres eso. – Don’t show me that.
No nos traigas nada. – Don’t bring us anything.
No le prestes tu móvil. – Don’t lend her your phone.
No les enseñes la foto. – Don’t show them the photo.

Advanced sentence structures

How are you feeling so far about how to use indirect object pronouns in Spanish? The sentence structures we’ve seen in the previous sections were all relatively straightforward, with the pronoun either placed directly before the conjugated verb or attached to the end of the other verb form in clauses that are built on two verbs.

If you’ve mastered most of the contexts we covered above, you’re already able to correctly construct most sentences using indirect object pronouns in Spanish. In fact, you’ve probably already seen more content than other lessons on the topic even offer.

Since today’s post is intended as a comprehensive resource on using indirect object pronouns in Spanish, we’re nonetheless including these last sections to cover some of the toughest sentence structures where you’ll need to incorporate the indirect object pronouns.

All the Spanish personal pronouns

Things get confusing when we need to differentiate between the different categories of personal pronouns in Spanish, especially since many of them are identical within the same grammatical person. Let’s do a quick review before we move on.

Take a look at this full table with all five categories of personal pronouns in Spanish, grouped by grammatical person. As you can see, only the third-person pronouns differ between the reflexive, direct object, and indirect object pronouns! Knowing which one to use all comes down to the noun’s relationship to the verb.

Subject pronouns	Prepositional pronouns	Reflexive pronouns	Direct object pronouns	Indirect object pronouns
yo	mí	me	me	me
tú	ti	te	te	te
él ella usted	él ella usted	se se se	lo la lo, la	le, se* le, se* le, se*
nosotros nosotras	nosotros nosotras	nos nos	nos nos	nos nos
vosotros vosotras	vosotros vosotras	os os	os os	os os
ellos ellas ustedes	ellos ellas ustedes	se se se	los las los, las	les, se* les, se* les, se*

*The third-person indirect object pronouns only become se when used alongside third-person direct object pronouns. We’ll see this in the next section.

In the following sections, we’ll take a close look at the contexts where we need to pay close attention to which category of personal pronouns we’re using.

Indirect object pronouns + Direct object pronouns

At first glance, it may seem like a challenge to keep the indirect and direct object pronouns straight when they both appear together. The good news is that they always appear in the same place and in the same order: first the indirect object pronoun, then the direct object pronoun.

[indirect object pronoun] [direct object pronoun]

That’s right! In sentence structures where the indirect object pronoun appears before the conjugated verb, we just add the direct object pronoun directly after it. They remain separate words. In sentence structures where the indirect object pronoun is attached at the end of the other verb form, we just add the direct object pronoun onto it as well. Otherwise, the word order we’ve seen thus far remains identical.

Let’s see this with some of the same example sentences from the previous sections. We’re highlighting the indirect objects in bold and the direct objects in italics:

¿Necesitamos la contraseña del wifi? El barista nos la dirá. – Do we need the wifi password? The barista will tell us it.
¿Dónde está el paquete? ¿Te lo han enviado ya? – Where’s the package? Have they sent you it yet?
Tengo un secreto. Necesito contártelo. – Te lo necesito contar. – I have a secret. I need to tell you it.
No sabemos las reglas. Están explicándonoslas. – Nos las están explicando. – We don’t know the rules. They are explaining them to us.
¿Recibiste los resultados? No, no van a enviármelos. – No, no me los van a enviar. – Did you receive the results? No, they’re not going to send me them.
Deseamos algo de beber. Tráenoslo. – We’d like something to drink. Bring it to us.

All of the example sentences we just saw had at least one of the pronouns in the first or second person. Now it’s time to examine the special case where both of the pronouns are in the third person. When this happens, we change the indirect object pronoun to se!

This rule exists to avoid an awkward pronunciation where two consecutive syllables begin with the letter L. In other words, the double-L direct and indirect object pronoun combinations in the first list below are not allowed. Instead, we use se as our indirect object pronoun, for both singular and plural:

lelo, lela, lelos, lelas, leslo, lesla, leslos, leslas: Incorrect
selo, sela, selos, selas, selo, sela, selos, selas: Correct

Now let’s see some of our original example sentences where both the indirect and direct objects are in the third person. Again, in order to help identify the two categories here, we’re putting the indirect objects in bold and the direct objects in italics.:

La novia de Juan ve las bonitas flores. Él se las compra. – Juan’s girlfriend sees the pretty flowers. He buys them for her.
Ella merece una oportunidad. Deberías dársela. – Se la deberías dar. – She deserves an opportunity. You should give it to her.
Ellas quieren copiar mis notas. Voy a prestárselas. – Se las voy a prestar. – They want to copy my notes. I’m going to lend them to them.
Ustedes no pueden soportar la verdad. No estamos diciéndosela. – No se la estamos diciendo. – You can’t handle the truth. We are not telling it to you.
Ellos están en esa foto. Enséñasela. – They are in that photo. Show it to them.
Esa foto es terrible. No se la enseñes. – That photo is terrible. Don’t show it to them.

Mastering the use of indirect and direct object pronouns together will take some getting used to, but at least the rules are straightforward. They always appear in the same order! Just don’t forget to change the indirect object pronoun to se when both are third-person pronouns.

Indirect object pronouns + Reflexive verbs

The next tricky set of pronouns we need to address involves using reflexive verbs with object pronouns. Apart from the singular and plural third-person pronouns, all the other grammatical persons use the exact same words for both reflexive and indirect object pronouns. So how do we keep them straight in a sentence?

With reflexive verbs, the subject performs the action on itself. But depending on how the action is framed, the reflexive pronoun might act as a direct or an indirect object.

If the action affects the subject as a whole, the pronoun is functioning as the direct object. But when the action targets a specific part of the body or something closely associated with the subject, the same pronoun acts as the indirect object, and the body part or object becomes the direct object.

Let’s look at two simple examples to make this distinction clear:

Me lavo. – I wash myself.
Me lavo las manos. – I wash my hands.

In the first sentence, the subject yo is both performing and receiving the action entirely, so the reflexive pronoun me is acting as the direct object of the verb’s action. In the second sentence, the action is directed at las manos, so las manos is now the direct object of the verb’s action and me acts as the indirect object that the action is affecting.

This distinction is especially common in everyday routines involving personal care with verbs like lavarse (to wash oneself), peinarse (to comb oneself), or cepillarse (to brush oneself). These often involve body parts, which appear as direct objects, while the person affected is identified with a reflexive pronoun that acts as an indirect object.

Let’s see a few more examples:

Me cepillo los dientes. – I brush my teeth.
Nos peinamos el cabello. – We comb our hair.
Se lava la cara. – He washes his face.

In each of these sentences, the reflexive verb and its associated pronoun show that the subject is involved in the action, but the body part is what receives that action as a direct object. Now let’s replace these direct objects with direct object pronouns:

Me los cepillo. – I brush them.
Nos lo peinamos. – We comb it.
Se la lava. – He washes it.

What’s the conclusion here? Since the reflexive pronouns are acting as indirect objects in these sentences, standard indirect object pronouns and reflexive pronouns can’t be used together. It’s really a case of either / or. This sentence structure is technically correct, where we place the reflexive pronoun before the direct object pronoun, but it’s not really used. Just stick with the full sentences like we saw in the previous examples.

Indirect object pronouns + Middle voice Se

There are sentences in Spanish where the action isn’t explicitly performed by anyone or where things just seem to happen on their own. To express this idea of accidentality, we use the pronoun se. For example, in the Spanish sentence “se cayó el vaso,” the glass “fell,” but we don’t say exactly who dropped it, with the focus being on the thing experiencing a change of state without intending to. This use of se is known as middle voice or accidental se.

Now, these actions can be made more personal if we include indirect object pronouns to indicate that this accidental action has affected someone:

Se le cayó el vaso. – The glass was (accidentally) dropped by him.

Here, we’ve added the indirect object pronoun le to show who was affected by the action. To sum it up, while se gives the action a neutral or accidental tone, the indirect object pronoun tells us who experiences the result.

Let’s look at a few more examples to see how this can work with other verbs. Remember that the indirect object pronouns all refer to the people who were affected by the actions, while the se implies that they didn’t intentionally take the actions.

Se les olvidaron las llaves. – They forgot the keys.
Se le rompió el celular. – His phone broke.
Se le manchó la camisa. – Her shirt got stained.
Se nos quemó la comida. – Our food was burnt.
Se te cayó el libro. – You dropped the book.

This structure might feel unfamiliar at first, but it’s very natural in everyday Spanish. For a closer look at how to use it naturally, check out our dedicated post on accidental se, and don’t miss our full guide on the many uses of se to explore how this little word works in other contexts too.

Spanish verbs that take indirect object pronouns

The last advanced topic we need to cover involves Spanish verbs that take indirect objects, whose English counterparts take direct objects. For many such verbs this has a cultural explanation, where the verb’s action is considered to benefit someone (signalling an indirect object) rather than simply acting on them (defining a direct object). For other verbs, the explanation is also somewhat clear, grammatically, from how they’re used in sentences.

Let’s start with Spanish verbs whose English translations clearly take direct objects. We’ll use ayudar as our example, meaning to help, since this verb frequently confuses learners. If “you help your mom” in English, she’s the direct object of the verb’s action, right? But in Spanish, if “tú ayudas a tu mamá,” she’s the one you’re doing the action to or for. Did you notice the telltale clue with the preposition a? Literally in Spanish, “you help to her.”

Tú le ayudas. – You help her.
¿Quieren ayudarnos con la tarea? – ¿Nos quieren ayudar con la tarea? – Do you want to help us with the homework.

Other such verbs include interesar, usually translated as to interest, and encantar, often translated as to like or to love. Let’s see some example sentences to see how they work with indirect objects.

¿Este libro te interesa? – Does this book interest you? – Is this book of interest to you?
Las cascadas me encantan. – Me encantan las cascadas. – I love waterfalls. – Waterfalls are delightful to me.

These English translations may suggest direct objects at first. When we switch the wording around to get closer to the Spanish meaning, however, even the English translations use indirect object pronouns. In other words, interesar is better translated as to be of interest to, while encantar is to be delightful to.

The Spanish construction here is close to another very common verb that many beginners are familiar with: gustar, usually translated as to like. Often considered a “reverse” verb, an indirect object pronoun identifies whoever is doing the liking, while the verb itself is conjugated to agree with whatever is liked. A clue to the fact that we’re using indirect object pronouns here is that the person doing the liking is often also introduced with the preposition a.

The group of verbs we’re looking at here are known as verbos afectivos in Spanish, since they are generally used to describe preferences or opinions.

Let’s see some examples using gustar. In the first English sentence, we’ll provide the common English translation of gustar as to like. We’ll then also provide a reformulated English sentence with a translation of to be pleasing to, which then also takes an indirect object in English.

Me gustan las comedias románticas. – I like romantic comedies. – Romantic comedies are pleasing to me.
¿Te gusta conducir? – Do you like driving? – Is driving pleasing to you?
A María le gustan los camarones. – María likes shrimps. – Shrimps are pleasing to her.
Nos gusta hacer senderismo en la montaña. – We like hiking in the mountains. – Mountain hiking is pleasing to us.
A Allison y Carlos les gusta la Playa de la Barceloneta. – Allison and Carlos like Barceloneta Beach. – Barceloneta Beach is pleasing to them.

Gustar is the most common Spanish verb that takes indirect object pronouns in this way, but there are many others. We already saw interesar and encantar above, which are quite similar. They take some getting used to, but once you know how to use the indirect object pronouns in Spanish, you unlock this entire series of verbos afectivos!

We recommend our related posts that go into these verbs in a lot more detail. Start with learning how to conjugate gustar, and then move on to our follow-up post with 15 Spanish verbs that take indirect object pronouns.

Conclusion: Indirect object pronouns in Spanish

Nice job! If you’ve come this far in today’s post, you’ve just seen everything you need to know about using indirect object pronouns in Spanish!

It turned out to be a very in-depth lesson with a lot of distinct sections, but many of the fundamentals remained constant through most of them. Let’s do a quick review of the most important points before we say goodbye.

First we just reviewed that indirect objects identify who or what a verb’s action is done to, for, or at. The corresponding prepositions in Spanish are para and a, which help us to identify the nouns we can replace with indirect object pronouns.

There are just six indirect object pronouns in Spanish, corresponding to the first-, second-, and third-person singular and plural. This means that there’s no differentiation between masculine or feminine, and that the usted forms are identical to the other third-person forms. This table shows the full list of indirect object pronouns in Spanish:

Grammatical person	Singular	Plural
First-person	me	nos
Second-person	te	os
Third-person	le, se*	les, se*

*The third-person pronouns only become se when used alongside third-person direct object pronouns.

We spent the rest of the post tackling the same question in so many different sentence structures: where do indirect object pronouns go in Spanish? To sum up nearly every one, they go either right before the conjugated verb, or they’re attached directly to the end of the other verb form. As we do in all our posts, we demonstrated each of the contexts with plenty of example sentences using indirect object pronouns in Spanish and English.

We ended the post with some advanced sentence structures, going into a lot of detail on each one. We saw that using indirect and direct object pronouns together isn’t much different than just using one of them, with the important exception where we switch le or les to se as noted in the table above. Our last sentence structure considered a particular series of Spanish verbs that always take indirect object pronouns, with gustar being the most well-known.

Thanks for taking the time to master the intricacies of the Spanish indirect object pronouns with us today. If you want to dig deeper, don’t hesitate to click through to the many additional resources we linked to throughout the lesson. We’re happy to provide a ton of resources to help you learn essential Spanish grammar concepts, so if you’ve gotten this far you’re well on your way!

Practice: Indirect object pronouns in Spanish

We’ll end today’s post with a set of sentences to give you some practice using indirect object pronouns in Spanish.

The following sentences all have the indirect objects in bold. Please rewrite the sentences using the correct indirect object pronouns. Many of the sentences have two possible structures that are both correct.

The answers are below, along with the English translations.

1. Yo puedo cantar una canción para ustedes.

2. El profesor explicó la lección a los estudiantes.

3. Nosotros vamos a dar regalos a los niños.

4. Yo estoy escribiendo una carta para mi jefe.

5. Ellos enviaron las invitaciones a sus amigos.

6. Yo quiero enviar un mensaje a Laura.

7. Ana mostró las fotos del viaje a sus amigos.

8. Luis escribió un poema para mí.

9. Marcos pidió ayuda a su mamá.

10. Nosotros compramos una camiseta para ti.

Answers

1. Yo puedo cantarles una canción. – Yo les puedo cantar una canción. – I can sing you a song.

2. El profesor les explicó la lección. – The teacher explained the lesson to them.

3. Nosotros vamos a darles regalos. – Nosotros les vamos a dar regalos. – We’re going to give them gifts.

4. Yo estoy escribiéndole una carta. – Yo le estoy escribiendo una carta. – I’m writing him a letter.

5. Ellos les enviaron las invitaciones. – They sent them the invitations.

6. Yo quiero enviarle un mensaje. – Yo le quiero enviar un mensaje. – I want to send her a message.

7. Ana les mostró las fotos del viaje. – Ana showed them the photos from the trip.

8. Luis me escribió un poema. – Luis wrote me a poem.

9. Marcos le pidió ayuda. – Marcos asked her for help.

10. Nosotros te compramos una camiseta. – We bought you a t-shirt.