Unless I’m mistaken, in this sentence “les” is an indirect object pronoun meaning “them”. Isn’t this sentence redundant, then, repeating the indirect object: “He’s teaching them Arabic to the boys”? Wouldn’t both of the following sentences be correct and less redundant:
Él les está enseñando arabé. (He’s teaching them Arabic)
Él está enseñando arabé a los niños. (He’s teaching Arabic to the boys)
Is Sentence 1 correct? Perhaps used to emphasize the object?
I’ve never studied Spanish formally, but I think you have to have the indirect object les regardless of whether you specify the referent in the same sentence. So yes, it’s redundant, but that’s just the way of the grammar.
I don’t know if your sentence 2 is correct (although I’m not a native speaker). (And, to be very picky, you’ve got the accent on the wrong syllable in “árabe”). As I understand it, the direct object pronoun should be attached to the end of the participle like this:
2) Está enseñándoles árabe.
OP: You are correct that “les” is redundant, and the others are correct that it is nonetheless obligatory. Redundancy is a design feature of language, though different languages cash it out in different ways. A lot of agreement phenomena (such as in English the obligatory -s suffix on present tense verbs with a third-person singular subject) could be viewed as largely redundant.
“le” not “les” since it refers to Arabic, not to the kids.
Sentence 2 is also correct. Here “les” is correct since it refers to the kids.
Sentence 3 sounds off. You do need the “le” there for reasons I do not know enough to explain but are natural to me as a native. Sorry I cannot be of better help.
Are you sure about that? I’m not a native speaker but this goes against everything I know about Spanish grammar. I’m wondering if maybe you perceive it as “le” because you speak a variety of Spanish in which word-final ‘s’ is dropped, which is pretty common.
Thanks for the responses so far, I didn’t think this question would actually generate a debate.
So is everyone agreed that sentence 1 and 2 are correct (except for my crazy accent usage) but 3 is wrong?
“Él está enseñando árabe a los niños.” Taking out the ‘les’ is definitely wrong? It needs to be put in there, even if the indirect object is specified by ‘a los niños’? And in general terms, even if you say the indirect object, you always need to put the indirect object pronoun as well?
The three sentences are OK, they have small differences in detail but the overall meaning is the same. Depending on the context the phrases are used one may fit better than the other two but there isn’t that much difference.
Personally I’d go for “El está enseñando árabe a los niños” for an immediate situation, as if he is teaching (right now) arabic to the kids. “El les está enseñando arabe a los niños” I´d use it to describe an ongoing education, more indefinite.
Mind you, that’s personal stylistic choice, and I couldn’t tell if it has actual basis in formal grammatical terms.
“Él les está enseñando árabe” would be the same as long as the context indicates that you are refering to the kids.
I insist that 1 is wrong with “les” and would be wrong with “le”. And as Ale said, 3 is correct but means something else.
I would use 3 as a part of a longer sentence:
“El está enseñando árabe a los niños en la ciudad”
or with no modifiers:
“El está enseñando árabe”
In both cases meaning that teaching Arabic is what he does as in answering “what does he do for a living?” not “Where is he now?”. Also a personal stylistic choice that I cannot back up with grammar rules.
After some searching, I have yet to come up with something definitive. “Concordancia de los cliticos” seems to be the big name for what we are dealing with in “le” vs “les”. Results for a search on that leads to abstracts of what look like really heady papers.
One result of interest and in layman terms says:
I have no idea what the DPD is. Diccionario de Palabras Dificiles?
In any case, it seems that the “le/les” does need to match the words it is referring to and exceptions seem to be somewhat common but frowned upon.
árabe, not arabé. And yes, the first sentence is redundant, for emphasis.
Él está enseñando árabe a los niños is grammatically correct but it’s so correct that it sounds forced. It’s the kind of sentence that sounds like you’d hear it in a language tape much more often than in a live conversation. Specially since 99% of speakers would drop the subject él. Like Sapo said, it makes more sense as a longer sentence that would answer again a different question, “what does he do?” “currently he is teaching English to children”
(Él) les está enseñando árabe implies that the listener already knows who “les” stands for. It wouldn’t be an answer to “what is he doing?” but to “what is he doing with the children?”
(Él) está enseñando árabe sounds like it would answer a different question. “What is his current job?” or “what is he teaching this schoolyear?”
The double structure with a le/les pronoun in front and the actual spelled-out direct object in back of the verb is quite common in Spanish. What is Nava doing? Le está explicando gramática a Windwalker.