Indirect Pronouns

[Sang]

Hi,
I'm starting to learn about indirect pronounce but I ran into a problem translating this sentence: "Qué clase de comida nos recomienda?"

On Google it's translated as "what type of food do you recommend?" but it doesn't make sense to me as there is a "nos" for "to us" in the sentence. As I understand it, it should be translated as "what type of food do you recommend TO US?" but the "recomienda" seems to be missing an "s" at the end, "recomiendas" for my translation to be correct. What am I missing here? please help...

Many thanks.

[Rusty]

Indirect Object Pronouns

The translation of the indirect object pronoun 'nos' doesn't appear in the machine translation, as you pointed out. That seems fine to me, since we would actually ask the question in English without including the indirect object pronoun '(to) us.'

Your question isn't about the indirect object pronoun, however. It's about whether an 's' needs to be added to the verb 'recomienda' or not.

Adding an 's' to the verb ending would change it from third person to second person. In English, we use the second person to address another individual; the pronoun we substitute is 'you.' In Spanish, both 'tú' and 'usted' are used to address another individual (both translate to English 'you,' as the first chart below illustrates). The tú conjugation, the second-person conjugation, is used for children, siblings, close friends and associates, and, in some cases, your parents and other endeared members of your family. To show respect to another individual, however, the third-person conjugation is used.

Recomendar (Present Indicative Tense)

Person	Singular Pronoun	Verb Ending		Plural Pronoun	Verb Ending
1st	yo (I)	recomiendo		nosotros (we)	recomendamos
2nd	tú (you)	recomiendas		vosotros (you)	recomendáis
3rd	usted/él/ella (you/he/she)	recomienda		ustedes/ellos/ellas (you/they/they)	recomiendan

The indirect object pronoun appearing in the Spanish question appears in its first-person plural form. It refers to those who are seated. The person being addressed is the waiter/waitress.
That's why these two parts of speech -the singular subject (the person being addressed) and the plural indirect object (the people referenced indirectly)- don't have anything in common, as far as endings go.

Indirect Object Pronouns

Person	Singular Pronoun		Plural Pronoun
1st	me (me)		nos (us)
2nd	te (you)		os (you)
3rd	le (you/him/her)		les (you/them/them)