Practical Spanish Grammar pg 155

I am dividing this grammar lesson into two parts because I need to study them separately. The second part is PSG 9 - Grammar IIb - Accidental & Unplanned Occurrences

The sentence El libro me gusta means I like the book even though literally it might be translated The book is pleasing to me. Libro is the subject¹ and the verb, gusta, must agree with it. If we change libro to libros then we must change the verb to the third person plural, gustan.

This grammatical construction does not exist in English. These Indirect Object Pronoun Verbs only have 3rd person singular or plural subjects so are never conjugated in first or second person forms and they always take an indirect object such as Me in the above sentence. They remind me of reflexive verbs in that gustar could almost be memorized as gustarle to remind one that the indirect object is required.

Here are some of the verbs that follow the same pattern as gustar include:

• agradar - to like, to please
• apetecer - to like (food, drink)
• convenir - to be suitable, to be convenient
• doler - to hurt, to ache
• encantar - to like
• enfadar - to make mad
• faltar - to miss, to lack
• hacer gracia - to be funny to someone
• importar - to matter, to be important
• interesar - to interest
• irritar - to irritate
• molestar - to bother, to annoy
• ocurrir - to happen, to occur
• parecer - to seem, to look like
• pasar - to happen, to be the matter with
• sobrar - to be left (over)
• valer la pena - to be worthwhile

According to Gramática y Ortografía, these verbs imply that “something” (subject) influences (verb) someone (indirect object). These verbs can be recognized because

they imply an emotional response from the indirect object. The indirect object either likes or dislikes in some way the subject. If it bothers you, then we can say that you dislike it, and viceversa.

PSG also mentions that some of these verbs can be conjugated normally and, when they are, they have a different sense to them. Convenir means to be suitable or to be convenient when constructed in the 3rd person along with the indirect object. When it is conjugated any other way it means to agree

The lesson over at Learn Spanish has some good examples and exercises to help work out the details of this ‘odd’ construction.

Practical Spanish Grammar pg 151

I think I remember my High School English class lessons on indirect objects, but just to be sure I did a quick search and here is what I find:

Indirect Object

An indirect object, if used, always comes between the verb and the direct object. It tells to whom or for whom the action of the verb is done and who is receiving the direct object. So, an indirect object is acts as a prepositional phrase in which the preposition is not stated but is understood. If a preposition is used, then the word becomes the object of that preposition rather than an indirect object.

According to the lesson, English only has a few verbs that take an indirect object, whereas in Spanish any verb can take an indirect object with a wide range of meanings.

Rules

• If a noun functions as the indirect object it must be preceded by the preposition a
  Usted dio el libro a su amiga.
• If a noun functions as the indirect object one often adds the corresponding indirect object pronoun le or les to anticipate the noun.
  Usted le dio el libro a su amiga.
• Object of the preposition pronouns can be add to make the indirect object more emphatic, but cannot replace the indirect object.
  Usted le dio el libro or Usted le dio el libro a él but not Usted dio el libro a él
• Indirect object pronoun always precedes the direct object, whether before or after the verb.
• If both the indirect and direct object pronouns are 3rd person, the indirect object changes from le/les to se.
  Usted se lo dio instead of Usted le lo dio

This all seems rather strait forward till you see it working in practice. A bunch of se, le, lo, la, te, etcs strung in pairs and it gets confusing to find the references for the pronouns, at least in my feeble brain. Hopefully as I work through the practice exercises it will become more and more familiar. I also hope to find some lessons on the internet that will help as well.

I have been working on my Spanish fairly regularly. Here is where things stand right now:

SuperMemo:

• Cards: 5468
• Nouns: 996
• Verbs: 222
• Progress: Currently have about 300 cards to review each day.

Practical Grammar:

• Done: Chapter 9, Entire unit is in SuperMemo
• ToDo: Learn use of Direct and Indirect Objects so I can move on to Unit 10

Platiquemos:

Audio Work

• Listening to CDs of the Lessons in the car while I drive.

Text Work

• Progress: Unit 6 exercises are in SuperMemo
• ToDo: Unit 7 will be put into SuperMemo next.

Madrigal Magic Key:

• Progress: Still just up to lesson 6 into SuperMemo
• ToDo: Enter 2 more lessons into SuperMemo

LIYC Spanish:

• I am going to shelf this and focus on the above items.

My evaluation:

• Moving along pretty well. The current grammar portion of Practical Spanish Grammar is going to take much of my attention.

I have installed the .mp3 files or Platiquemos Unit 6 on my Palm and have added 330 new ‘cards’ into Supermemo from the lesson. Luckily there was little typing since Platiquemos includes a .pdf of the lesson which allows me to transfer the text to an editor where I format the prompts and responses for Supermemo.

Supermemo will spread these cards out over the next couple days for review but still it means I am further behind, although I have managed to get the number of cards needing to be reviewed to under 1000. Hopefully I will be able to bring that down to 0 by the end of the week.