Spanish direct object pronouns: lo, la, los, las and where they go

Which pronoun replaces which noun

The direct object is what answers “what?” or “whom?” after the verb. In Vi la película, the película is what I saw, so it becomes la: La vi.

Two details that trip people up. The pronoun matches the noun’s gender, not the person’s: a laptop is la computadora in Mexico and el ordenador in Spain, so the same object is la on one side of the Atlantic and lo on the other. And the personal a changes nothing: ¿Conoces a mi hermana? — Sí, la conozco.

There’s also a neuter lo that replaces a whole idea rather than a noun: No lo sé. Ya lo sabía. Here lo isn’t standing in for a masculine word; it’s standing in for the entire thing that was said.

Where the pronoun goes

Three positions, and only one of them is optional.

Before a conjugated verb. This is the default with ordinary finite verb forms: La conozco. No lo compré. ¿Los viste? Even with a negative, the no goes first and the pronoun stays glued to the verb. The exception is the affirmative command, where the pronoun attaches to the end instead — Llámalo, Hazlo, Dímelo — and that one is two rows down. Conocer shows up a lot with these pronouns because its object is usually a person — la conozco, los conozco — and the full conocer conjugation is on its own page.

Attached to an infinitive or a gerund — or in front of the whole phrase. Both are correct and both are common: Voy a llamarlo and Lo voy a llamar. Estoy leyéndolo and Lo estoy leyendo. Attaching to a gerund adds a written accent to keep the stress: leyéndolo, haciéndola.

Attached to an affirmative command, in front of a negative one. Llámalo ahora. No lo llames todavía. This split catches everyone, because the two commands look like the same sentence. The command forms themselves, including the eight irregular tú commands, are on the Spanish command forms page.

What you can’t do is put the pronoun after a conjugated verb. Veo lo isn’t accented Spanish; it’s unparseable.

Reference chart

Lo or le: the leísmo question

You will hear le vi and le llamé for a man, and you will also hear lo vi and lo llamé. Both are real Spanish, and the split is regional rather than random.

The grammatical form for a masculine direct object is lo. It is the standard form, it is what you will hear across most of Latin America, and it is the safest choice for a learner — though leísmo is not exclusively Spanish either, and there are pockets of it in the Americas too. In central and northern Spain, le is used instead when the direct object is a male person — not for an object, and traditionally not for a woman. The Real Academia accepts that specific case as correct, which is why both appear in edited writing.

Practical advice: use lo. It’s correct everywhere, and it keeps the direct and indirect systems separate in your head. Nobody in Madrid will hear it as a mistake. If your teacher is from Valladolid and says le llamé, that’s their variety, not a slip.

Watch out for the mirror error, though: le for a thing — el informe, le terminé — is wrong in every variety.

Le belongs to the other set, the Spanish indirect object pronouns, which mark who receives something rather than what gets acted on. When the two sets meet in one sentence, le turns into se.

The pairs that change meaning