Hello all you lovely españophiles!
Pregunta!
I cam across a sample sentence on DL that read
"Ella me lo cuenta todo"
I understand everything about that sentence with the exception of that pesky extra lo in there.
I can understand the lo being there without the presence of the todo.
ella me lo cuenta -
- She tells me - (generally)
- She tells it to me - (literally)
However with the todo present, it seems just oh so awkward. It seems like it translates to "she tells it, everything, to me" and... oh snap! wait.. nevermind. Ok, it just hit me. Todo means "all" as well. It's one of them thar words that has like 8 different possible translations depending on context (all, everyone, everybody, everything, every, etc..)
soooo the lo here actually means
- she tells it all to me
Which, in English is just better off being said as "she tells me everything".
Well, thanks for your help! You've been awesome lol...
Seriously though, if anyone could expand upon this, that'd be great. Could I just say "ella me cuenta todo" and have it mean the same thing? If not and if I do need to include the lo, why? Is there a well defined rule that I can follow as to when I need to include the lo even though it seems redundant? Are there specific verbs that this applies to or is it situational?(grammatically speaking)
I know that's a lot but we all love to get our geek on, amirite? So let it rip and fill me up with all the rightrous redundant object pronoun knowledge you can lay on me.