The use of "le" as an indirect object in Spanish

The use of "le" as an indirect object in Spanish
 

Hi, hopefully someone can clarify this for me... In the following sentence, what does the "le" represent?

Le esta anadiendo azucar al te - She is adding sugar to the tea.

Is "Le" meant to represent an indirect object as in "to the tea"..?

The sugar would be the direct object (being acted upon), the tea being the indirect object (the recipient of the sugar).

From what I have been reading and trying to clarify, an indirect object can only be a person or an animal... Therefore, the correct way to have written the sentence does not require the "Le" at all...

Ella esta anadiendo azucar al te - She is adding sugar to the tea.

Can anyone help?

Thanks, Matt

I am sure someone else will help you in a better way than I can. But let me try through my uneducated ways.

Le here represents, at least in Chile, she or he. Le, in this case unknown gender, is adding tea to the tea.

I hope it helps, even if a little.

An indirect object can be any object, not just a person or an animal.

The sentence is correctly written with the indirect object pronoun 'le'. If there is an indirect recipient of the action of the verb, the indirect object pronoun (IOP) must be used. The indirect object itself - 'al té' - is also present in your example. If it isn't understood, or if it needs to be clarified, the indirect object is used in addition to the IOP.

Full Sentence (used to establish/clarify all nouns)
Ella le está añadiendo azúcar al té.

Sentence with Omitted Subject and Indirect Object (if already known)
Le está añadiendo azúcar.

Same Sentence, but with a Direct Object Pronoun (to take the place of azúcar)
Se lo está añadiendo.

Again, the indirect object pronoun must always be present (if there is an indirect recipient of the action of the verb). The indirect object itself may be omitted (if it's known or understood).

If both a third-person indirect object pronoun and a third-person direct object pronoun are used, the indirect object pronoun 'le' (or 'les') is changed to 'se' to avoid the cacophony of 'le lo' (or 'le la', 'les lo', 'les la', 'les los', and 'les las').
When both an indirect object pronoun and a direct object pronoun are used, the IOP precedes the DOP.


By the way, there is an 'Accents' drop-down menu just above the typing area. It contains all the special characters you'll need to type in Spanish.

Perfect
 

Thank you very much Rusty - you have cleared that up brilliantly for me.

I have many more queries where that one came from, so I look forward to your help in the future!

Thanks again,

Matt :)

No hay de qué. :)

matt one of the things i have had to realise while studying direct and indirect objects which we are doing in class now is that unlike english almost everything has a gender. so in that sense even though an object is not a living thing it still has a gender.

however for indirect object pronouns gender does not matter (le/les, se). it matters with direct object pronous (lo/los, la/las)

Almost everything? Name me one thing that hasn't, apart from a neuter pronoun referring to 'it'. Seriously though, a more accurate statement would be that all Indo-European languages allocate a gender for all nouns, where English is almost an an exception, and Persian is the only complete exception.