Combining Spanish Pronouns

Rob Ashby
The Spanish Obsessive
First off, let’s take a look at those pronouns side by side:
Direct Object Pronouns | Indirect Object Pronouns | Translation |
me | me | me |
te | te | you (informal) |
lo, la | le | him, her, it, you (formal) |
nos | nos | us |
os | os | you (plural, informal) |
los, las | les | them, you (plural, formal) |
You’ll find that you need to use both types of pronoun in certain sentences – here are a couple of examples in English (direct object pronoun, indirect object pronoun):
I gave it to him
She told it to us
Word order
When both pronouns are used, the indirect pronoun goes before the direct one:
Te lo daré → I’ll give it to you
Nos lo dijo → She told us
With negative statements, the negative word (“no”, “nunca”, etc) goes before both pronouns:
No me lo dió → He/she didn’t give it to me
Some word changes
When certain pronouns combine, the indirect pronoun becomes “se”.
This… | Becomes… |
Le lo | Se lo |
Le la | Se la |
Le los | Se los |
Le las | Se las |
Les lo | Se lo |
Les la | Se la |
Les los | Se los |
Les las | Se las |
As you can see, this applies when both pronouns begin with the same letter “l”. This was originally to avoid tongue-twisting – “se la” is easier to say than “le la”. In each case, either “les” or “le” becomes “se”:
Se lo compró → He/she bought it for them
As “se” can be translated in so many ways, you´ll often find speakers using a personal pronoun to clarify things. This can be placed at the start or the end:
Se lo compró él or
él se lo compró
That’s it! Those are the basics of what you need to know to combine pronouns in Spanish. As we always say, true understanding of this will come with exposure and practice. So, check out our Spanish courses and see if you can spot us using these!