Maria ayuda a Felipe -> Maria ayuda a el -> Maria le ayuda

fabrizio

impressive use of the apostrophe there :-) I get that le means a el but i cant see how you get to the point where it means simply el.

I agree, the two are linked, I was suggesting a way that leismo and the personal a could both get started together.

x annoys him/ x is annoying to him. it doesnt really affect the meaning very much so its easy to get it wrong and easy to let it slide

however, when you then hear something like

la ruida le molesta a Ramón

you will be "apparently" have a le instead of a lo and a superfluous a.

This might lead you to propose 2 new rules

le = lo when its a person (a bloke "obviously")

a = a direct person flag (helpful with the ambiguous lo)

although the reasoning is wrong they are quite useful add ons and survive.once you have these "rules" you start applying them to verbs like ayudar and you get

Maria lo ayuda a Felipe or Maria le ayuda

next thing you know they are even saying it in the colonies so it must be true :-)

way past my bedtime too. Hasta mañana, me voy a bedibibos.

NB. im still getting to grips with gramatical objects  and I find it very easy to confuse myself.

1. Maria ayuda a Felipe: Here i agree with stevestr that the "a" does not mean "to". it is simply a flag that tells us that filipe is a direct object and that filipe is a person.

In English it is "maria helps filipe" and not "maria gives help to filipe" (maria, da ayuda, a filipe )

1b. Maria ayuda a el:  is the same as 1a. just with a pronoun instead of a noun we know el stands for a person so it still gets a personal a

1c. Maria le ayuda: now here, as far as i can see, one of two things must be happening:

le is a direct object. It is the thing that is actively being "helped".  If this is the case then, the more usual pronoun "lo" has been substituted with le (leismo) which is why i say le = lo

Or, le is an indirect object which means "to him, to her, to sir", etc. It is just the destination of the help and not the thing that is actively being helped.
I believe (though i may well be wrong) that this would be an incorrect usage of ayudar.

le = "a el" = incorrect? use of indirect object.
le = lo = leismo (direct object is a person)

2. if, FILIPE were an acronym for the filipino polar expedition we could drop the "a" because the  expedition isnt a person and write "maria ayuda FILIPE". Because the verb ayudar is acting directly upon the object FILIPE, we dont need an a (el,ella,usted) to indicate where the help goes.

However, if filipe "is" a person we would need to retain the personal a. Therefore, (i believe) you couldnt just write "maria ayuda filipe" or, therefore, 2b.  maria ayuda el , unless el <> a person.

2c. "maria lo ayuda" sounds good to me. this is just 1c. without the leismo.

sorry about the long explanation but there is so much potential for misunderstanding here. Horrid stuff, I can see why they dont teach it in schools here anymore. :-)

You say that "a Felipe" is not an indirect object. Well, all the point here is that yes, it actually IS an indirect object. Why Spaniards use indirect object when referring to a person, even if the verb is transitive and it could take a direct object? As I said before, I don't know, maybe they think that's rude to treat a person like an object or who knows why, but the fact remains that they do use the indirect object. Once you accept this, there's nothing left to explain about why they say "Maria le ayuda", meaning that Maria helps Felipe, because "le" it's just the indirect object form of the 3rd person pronoun (while "lo/la" is the direct object form).

So you are saying that "leismo" is not just a matter of using the wrong pronoun but literally and deliberately using the wrong object type ?

I like it. its a much tidier idea than the usual special case pronouns explanation and it explains the personal a as well i.e. its not a flag, it really is the "a" from a el /ella/ et al.

cool :-)

Soy de México. De que parte de Rusia eres?

Comparte algunas fotos con nosotros!

Saludos!

¿Donde se puedo compartir fotos aquí? Y una pregunta ¿como se dice podcast en español? Creo que igual como en el inglés... aún en ruso es lo mismo.

Sí, Rusia es muy grande... )) Soy de la capital, de Moscú.

podcast = podcast :-)

los accentos del mundo latino se puede encontrar en varios episodios del taco al tango.

para compartir fotos se necesita subirlas al red, quizas a su pagina de facebook, y despues, incrustelas en su mensage a spanishpod por medio del icono del arbol en el editor de mensajes

P.D.

Yo me llamo Artem... en español será Artemio. Pues por lo menos los latinos me llaman así.

P.P.S.

Do you usually comment in English or Spanish here? I see both thats why I ask.