Do you speak Spanish? I need help.

[kaoskat]

I can not, for the life of me, figure out when to use ese/este/le or eso/esto/lo. The "a"s I understand, but how do I tell whether I should use "e" or "o". I can't figure out the reason and without knowing the reason, I'm never going to get it right. I've been trying to understand for months and I still can't find the connection. Please help!

[ponyqueen]

Have you tried googling it? Even a native speaker might not know... just like how native English speakers don't know how to use their/there/they're; which & that; who's whose; borrow/lent and many others...

[kaoskat]

Um.... I know how to use all of those.....I would imagine that there are those who understand ese/este/le & eso/esto/lo as well. And I'm afraid, as I'm only learning, googling things in Spanish rarely turns out well because I only understand enough to get more confused. My only hope is someone who also speaks English tolerably and can actually answer my question. And as these aren't exactly different words with different meanings, I have a feeling the reason is fairly obvious once you know it. ese/eso/esa = that, este/esto/esta = this le/lo/la = well.... that one's hard to explain but it sorta means it/him or her.... but only when something is being done to it. So yeah... Same words just different genders. I imagine one is gender neutral but I dunno which one or.... well.... all nouns have a gender so when in the world would I need a gender neutral adjective or pronoun?

[Duenia]

I have my high school Spanish text books at home. I know I learned this in high school but don't remember off the top of my head. I'll see if I can find it for you unless someone who knows better chimes in

But I think they are a grammatical thing to be used in a certain tense?

[Griffin]

Well, I don't know any Spanish so I'm sorry if this isn't of much help! Spanish (and French and Italian) nouns only have the masculine and feminine genders and no neuter, am I right? I assume you would then use the gender neutral when there is no specific noun you are referring to, and thus cannot know the gender. Found this in Wiktionary:

¿Qué es esto?‎ ― What is this?

In this case there is no specific noun which the pronoun refers to. Whereas if you had a sentence like 'What is this madness?', you would need to use the form of 'this' that agrees with the gender of 'madness' (whatever that is in Spanish). Wiktionary also told me the e-ending is the masculine and the o-ending is the neutral.

Again, I don't know Spanish so I'm only guessing on the basis of Latin. These derive from the Latin demonstrative pronouns, but in Latin you also have the neuter gender, which makes things a little easier... The neuter gender would be used with nouns belonging to that category, but also in cases like the Spanish example above, where 'this' is kind of vague and does not stand for or refer to any single noun. 

[kaoskat]

Yeah "¿Qué es esto?"‎ is "What is this?" So..... Wait..... That would mean "esto" is the gender neutral and "este" is the masculine then! That would be why I was so confused! I thought they were reversed and it got me all mixed up until I couldn't figure out which was which anymore! I wonder if the same is true with the other 2.... That would explain everything! Thanks Griffin! Now I feel completely silly. LOL It should have been obvious but then once I got confused I couldn't get myself un-confused.

[Griffin]

Haha don't worry, grammar rules can be so confusing sometimes, no matter what the language is! It seems all your pronouns are listed in the same order - masculine - neuter - feminine - if that clarifies it.

I love Wiktionary BTW, it has helped me immensely with my Latin studies. They provide declension and conjugation tables so I could always double check if I was unsure about the correct form. Furthermore, I find it easy to use, compared to some other online dictionaries.

[kaoskat]

Thanks! I'll check it out. It may prove useful to me too! Most of them I've tried to use have made things more confusing.

[Dreamer]

Native Spanish speaker dropping in here, we don't actually have gender neutral pronouns!

"Eso/esto/lo" is used for objects or animals whose gender we don't know.

"Ese/esto/le" is used for people of the male gender (and for male animals too)

For those who care about gender identity, calling someone "eso/esto/lo" is like using "it" pronouns on them, so it is not recommended.

There's people who want to propose a gender neutral term for people but there's nothing set in stone yet.

Hope it helps!

[Pierlala]

Doesn't Google Translate help a little?

[kaoskat]

Doesn't Google Translate help a little?

No. No it really doesn't. Half the time even I know it's wrong. It can be a sorta useful device when I'm not sure about something but no not really, because you can't count on it being right. Besides, I don't want to have to use a translator for everything I say forever and unless it gives me a reason for why something is what it is, I'm not going to learn to use it on my own.

If there's one thing I've learned from this, it's that understanding another language is a lot easier than using it! Ugh.

Oh and thank you Dreamer! *makes note never to use eso/esto/lo for people* So is it like English then, that you default to "he" when the gender of a person is unknown?

[Dreamer]

Oh and thank you Dreamer! *makes note never to use eso/esto/lo for people* So is it like English then, that you default to "he" when the gender of a person is unknown?

Indeed!

[NoelVS]

Dreamer explained perfectly about esto/eso for things, este/ese for male people ^^ lo and le would be a bit more complicated. Please try to avoid google translator, that is the reason that make me write some nonsense things

[tikibirds]

Gah, this brings back nightmare from high school spanish. And college spanish...