Pronoun Use

I do not understand the use of Le in the following sentence:  ?Le pagaste a Luis por el café? Can anyone help ?

Hola Paul,

The le is an example of the redundant indirect pronoun usage.  If it's understood that it's Luis, then you could ask ¿Le pagaste por el cafe? But you can't ask : ¿ Pagaste a Luis por el cafe? The  le needs to be be there. This came up on the forum a year or so ago and I posted a link to a video that explains this. You can try a search in the forum and if I come across it I'll post it here. Hope this helps.

Saludos,

Ricardo
 

Thank you for that explanation.  This is tricky stuff and it illustrates that what may be sufficient in English (you paid Luis for the coffee) is not in Spanish due to grammar rules.

Thank You .  I quess you just have to know the rules.

Yes, I had the most difficult time understanding why I needed to use both an indirect object AND an IO pronoun. It just doesn't make sense when you think in English. You just have to accept that it is the way it is in Spanish.

Hola a todos,

A link regarding this, and a video link will be forthcoming.
http://www.drlemon.com/Grammar/indirectobjects.html

Saludos,

Ricardo
 

Hola a todos,

Aqui está el enlace al video sobre pronombres de objeto directo y de objeto indirecto pronombres.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoQTuioUM80

Saludos,

Ricardo