What is the difference between “se” and “lo” in direct object pronouns in spanish?
Question by Anna: What is the difference between “se” and “lo” in direct object pronouns in spanish?
What is the difference between “se” and “lo” in DIRECT object pronouns in spanish? Sometimes you use “le”, sometimes you use “se” and sometimes you use “lo”. What’s the difference?
Best answer:
Answer by Randem
I think your question is a little bit unclear, but I’ll try to give examples to help clear up whatever it is that you don’t understand.
Then primary use of “se” is in reflexive verbs. That is, verbs whose object is the same as their subject. For example, lavarse – to clean oneself, to wash up, etc. The root verb is lavar, but because it is reflexive the verb is lavarse.
Thus, a sample sentence might be “Pablo se lava,” which means Paul is washing up. Here, se is also representative of a third-person subject. In the first person, it would be “Yo me lavo,” trading “se” for “me”.
The other use of “se” is in the passive voice. It’s easiest to understand though an example. You’ve probably seen signs in store windows that say “Se habla español aquí.” These signs are written in the passive voice, and have a meaning similar to “English is spoken here.” As another example, if you wanted to say “books can be purchased here,” you would say “se puede comprar libros aquí.”
The particle “lo” is an object for non-reflexive verbs. If you want to say “Where can I buy it?” you would say “¿Donde puedo comprarlo?” Or, to say “I have it,” you would say “yo lo tengo.”
I hope this helps.
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