Object Pronouns and why I hate them

I don't know why I'm having such trouble in this area, but it seems never-ending. Why does one use the DO pronoun in a sentence like "A Maria la ayuda Carlos" but the IO pronoun in ¿Ud. le va a ayudar a trabajar? (my translations: Carlos helps Maria and Are you going to help her work?). What exactly is the direct object in the second sentence? Any light shed would be great. :?

Hola annemarie. Where did you find the sentence "A Maria la ayuda Carlos"? I ask because I don't think it's correct. Even though in English "Maria" would be the direct object of "to help," the Spanish verb ayudar seems to work differently. It's *ayudar ___a ___alguien*, and perhaps for that reason, the pronoun used with ayudar is le rather than la or lo. Indeed, in the Rocket Spanish .pdf files, you'll see this in sentences such as *¿En qué le puedo ayudar?* and *Entonces, decide llamar al hotel, donde la secretaria le puede ayudar*. I asked a native speaker from Paraguay about this, and she confirmed that the sentence should read "A Maria le ayuda Carlos." She said that you'll sometimes hear people use "la" instead of "le" in such sentences, but "le" is correct. I think your second sentence is correct as it stands.

I believe I got this from the FSI course, according to my notes, but I'll check Loquella. It had me confused because I then read on the Internet that ayudar takes the indirect object and couldn't find anything to contradict that. I hate to memorize something that's wrong because I have a devil of a tiime getting it out of my head. Thanks very much for your help. Update: I just checked the Loquella site and it's in Lesson Ten. There's a series of them: Line 263: A Jose lo ayuda Juan Line 259: A ellos los ayuda Juan Line 265: A Carmen la ayuda Juan, etc. Am I reading these wrong or is this just not used in the real Spanish-speaking world?

[quo]*Quote from * annemarieko Am I reading these wrong or is this just not used in the real Spanish-speaking world?[/quo] Hi. I think you're reading them correctly. Whether they're correct is a different matter :D . All I can do is say again what I was told, namely, that le/les is correct, but that some people nonetheless use the direct rather than the indirect object.

:D That makes it a lot easier.