How to use direct and indirect object pronouns in Spanish?

A direct object is the noun or noun phrase that is directly acted upon by the verb, and the indirect object is the recipient or goal of that action. Let’s take a look at these examples:

In the examples above, un cuadro and (a) sus hijos are the answers to the questions “what?” and “who(m),” respectively. (What does Ana describe? / Who(m) does Ana describe?). They are called “direct objects.”

Let’s take a look at this example now:

In this example, we see a new element, a sus hijos(to her children) (to her children). This element answers the question, “to who(m)?” and is called an “indirect object.” In fact, indirect objects answer the questions, “to who(m)” or “for who(m).”

Together, the and are me, te, nos, os, lo, la, los, las, le, and les. These pronouns are used to replace direct and indirect objects. For example:

For the direct and indirect object pronouns that correspond to yo(I), tú / vos(you – informal), nosotros / nosotras(we), vosotros / vosotras(you all) — which, by the way, is only used in Spain — you don’t need to get a headache remembering these grammar terms, because you just use the same pronoun for the direct and the indirect object:

On the other hand, for the pronouns that correspond to él(he), ella(she), ellos(they – masculine), ellas(they – feminine) (either person or object), or to usted, ustedes(you – singular, formal / you all – formal) you use different words:

Be careful! Direct object pronouns must agree in and with the they are replacing. In the following example, el pastel is the direct object of the sentence and it is a masculine singular noun, that is why the pronoun we need to use is lo.

Now, let’s look at the example below: the noun las cartas is the direct object in this sentence, this noun is feminine plural, thus, we should use the pronoun las.

Need a refresher on how to tell the gender of Spanish nouns? How about, how to form the plural in Spanish? Look no further, we have posts for that!

Indirect object pronouns, on the other hand, only agree in number with the nouns they refer to since there are only two forms and no distinction between masculine and feminine. In the examples below, we use the indirect object pronoun to replace “your mother” and “your father” and as you can see, we use the pronoun le in both cases.

Now, let’s see how to place these pronouns in sentences.

Direct and indirect object pronouns are always placed before the conjugated verb in simple tenses – except the positive imperative – and perfect tenses (those with haber + past participle):

What happens when both the direct object pronoun and the indirect object pronoun are used in the same sentence? The indirect object pronoun always goes before the direct object pronoun. Take a look at the examples below:

To sum up what we’ve seen, in Spanish we always place the indirect object pronoun before the direct object pronoun. In addition, both are always placed before the conjugated verb. Although with positive imperatives, infinitives, and gerunds, pronouns are attached to the word, creating one single word. We also saw that with some verb combinations, we can either place the pronouns before the conjugated verb or attach them to the non-conjugated verb of the verb combination. Also, remember that when le or les and a 3rd person direct object pronoun appear together, le(s) change to se. See the examples below for a brief summary of all the cases we mentioned in this post!

That’s it! If you want to practice while learning how to cook Tortilla de Patata (a very typical Spanish dish), take a look at these activities we created. Enjoy!