Did You Know This About Indirect Object Pronouns?

The other day I watched a short documentary on YouTube about a desert in Chile being used as a dumping ground for used clothes from all over the world. (See below)

At 2:41 of the video, the narrator said,

to express the idea that ‘Carmen García is one of the hundreds of people who buy clothes FROM the importers of Zofri’.

After hearing it, two questions struck me immediately ⚡:

1. Since ‘los importadores de la Zofri’ is the indirect object, shouldn’t ‘les’ be used instead of ‘le’ because it is plural? 🤨

2. If we interpret ‘Le voy a comprar un regalo a Liz‘ as ‘I’m going to buy a gift FOR Liz’, why can’t the sentence of interest be interpreted as ‘Carmen García is one of the hundreds of people who buy clothes FOR the importers of Zofri’? 🤨

After consulting the Spanish community of Reddit and my Spanish tutor, I managed to find the answers.

The narrator made the error of using ‘le’ instead of ‘les’ for a plural indirect object. Apparently, this is a common grammatical error made by native Spanish speakers.

Though unrelated, another common grammatical error made by native Spanish speakers is ‘transferring the plural’ to the direct object pronouns when a “les” is replaced by ‘se’.

For example, people may simplify ‘Les dije eso a ellos’ → ‘Se los dije’, when it should be ‘Se lo dije’ because the direct object here (i.e. eso) is singular.

In the case of

The indirect object pronoun ‘Le’ tells us ’for whom’ I am buying a gift, NOT ‘to whom’.

Grammatically, I can either be buying a gift for or from Liz, but contextually, I can only be buying for her because we do not generally buy gifts from someone (by carrying out the action of buying a gift TO her), we buy gifts for them.

So this sentence should typically be interpreted as ‘I am going to buy a gift for (not ‘to’) Liz’

Regarding the sentence of interest,

The ‘les’ does not tell us ‘for whom’ but rather ’to whom’ Carmen buys clothes.

She does not buy for the importers of Zofri. Instead, she carries out the action of buying clothes TO the importers of Zofri, which means she buys from the importers.

Again, grammatically, Carmen can either be buying clothes for or from the importers, but contextually, she can only be buying from them because we do not generally buy things for importers, we buy things from them.

Without sufficient contextual clues, a sentence constructed with indirect object pronouns can be ambiguious, as another native Spanish speaker on Reddit points out with the following example,

In this case, Pablo can be the owner of the bike or the person who gets it.

Nevertheless, it would have been much easier for me if she had said ‘Carmen Garcia es una de las cientos de personas que compran ropa de los importadores DE la Zofri’. But learning about this was interesting so I guess never mind. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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