Rent a room from an ad

You've already met lo and la at the café: ¿El café? Lo quiero sin azúcar. (The coffee? I want it without sugar. A1, unit 6.) Now here are all four.

To avoid repeating a noun, English says "it" or "them". Spanish has four short words for this, chosen by the gender and number of the noun they replace:

The big difference from English is word order. The pronoun goes before the verb, and no goes even earlier:

• ¿Ves la terraza? — No, no la veo. — Do you see the terrace? — No, I don't see it.
• ¿Has leído el anuncio? — Sí, lo he leído. — Have you read the ad? — Yes, I've read it.

In the present perfect the pronoun goes before he, has, ha…: nothing comes between he and the past participle.

It works the same for people: lo is "him", la is "her". Dani es mi compañero de piso. Lo veo todos los días. (Dani is my roommate. I see him every day.)

Lo can also stand for a whole idea: No lo sé. (I don't know.)

Common mistakes

1. Putting the pronoun after the verb, as in English: ✗ veo la. The right order is la veo.
2. Leaving it out. English often answers without "it" ("Yes, I do"), but Spanish needs the pronoun: ¿Tienes las llaves? — Sí, las tengo. (Do you have the keys? — Yes, I do.)
3. Thinking "it" instead of the Spanish noun. A suitcase is just "it" in English, but la maleta is feminine: La llevo yo. (I'll carry it.)

Often there are two verbs: "want to see", "can show", "have to buy", "be going to sign". Then the pronoun has two correct places. The meaning is the same, so use either one:

The rule is simple: the pronoun goes either before the whole pair of verbs or on the end of the infinitive, as one word. There's no third place.

Don't:

• put it between the verbs: ✗ quiero la ver;
• write it after the infinitive as a separate word: ✗ quiero ver la (the right form is quiero verla);
• use it twice: ✗ la quiero verla.

No always comes first: No la quiero ver or No quiero verla (I don't want to see it).

With estar + gerund (unit 1) it's easier to put the pronoun in front: Lo estoy buscando. (I'm looking for it.)

With only one verb there's no choice: the pronoun goes before it, as in la veo or lo he firmado.

Tip: the joined form is easier at first, because the order is the same as in English: "want to see it" is quiero verla. But learn to recognize both by ear: Spaniards use both.

You already know primero, segundo, tercero (A1, unit 7). To name a floor, you need the rest, up to ten:

You know cuarto as "quarter" (las tres y cuarto, a quarter past three). It's the same word: a fourth part.

They all change for gender and number like ordinary adjectives in -o, and they go before the noun: el quinto piso, la quinta planta. Only primero and tercero get shorter before a masculine noun (primer, tercer); the others don't.

There are two ways to talk about a floor:

• Vivo en la quinta planta. — I live on the fifth floor.
• Vivo en el quinto. — I live on the fifth. Same thing, just shorter: the word piso is left out.
• ¿En qué planta está la habitación? — En la séptima. — What floor is the room on? — On the seventh.
• La dueña vive en el sexto, justo encima. — The landlady lives on the sixth, right upstairs.

Addresses and ads use short forms: 5.º is quinto, 3.ª is tercera. Calle Sueca, 12, 5.º B means building number 12, fifth floor, apartment B.

Careful with the count. In Spain the floor at street level is the planta baja (ground floor), and the numbers start above it. La primera planta — the first floor — is what Americans call the second floor, and la quinta is the American sixth. If the ad says sin ascensor (no elevator), that's a real difference.

Above ten, people rarely use ordinal numbers in conversation. They use a regular number: la planta doce — the twelfth floor.