Need help

[SpanishKlim]

Hola,

I'm not sure if it's the right thread for the question, but here it goes.
I've been studying marvelous Spanish for a couple of months and pronominal verbs baffle me.
Here's an extract from Wikipedia page about discovery of Cueva de Altamire by Modesto Cubillas:

"Modesto se lo comunico a Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, «mero aficionado» en paleontología, debió conocer la existencia de la cueva directamente por boca del mismo Cubillas, aparcero en su finca; no obstante, no la visitó hasta al menos 1875, y muy probablemente en 1876."

My translations is, formed more from common sense than grammar comprehension:

Modesto communicated this to Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, "a mere amateur" paleontologist, who had to get to know about existence of the cave directly from the same Cubillas, sharecropper in his(Marcelino) estate, nevertheless didn't visit it at least until 1874 and very probably until 1876.

The question is why "comunicar" is in the first person? Why is it pronominal?

Thanks in advance.

[Rusty]

The verb in question is not pronominal, nor is it conjugated in the first person.
The 'se' is the indirect object pronoun that refers to Marcelino and the 'lo' is the direct object pronoun (that which was communicated). ('le changes to 'se' if followed by 'lo')
The sentence is written in the third person and comunico should have been accented: comunicó

That is exactly what you translated, by the way.

[SpanishKlim]

Thank you, Rusty.

"Le" changing to "se", damn, I remember reading about that now!

And I thought it might be a case of a lost accent. Is it a typo or is it somewhat common to not accent sometimes?

[wrholt]

Originally Posted by SpanishKlim

Thank you, Rusty.

"Le" changing to "se", damn, I remember reading about that now!

And I thought it might be a case of a lost accent. Is it a typo or is it somewhat common to not accent sometimes?

The more informal the purpose of writing something, the more common it is to not bother writing the accents, to use non-standard spellings and grammar, and so on.