I'm having difficulties with a phrase in the Spanish language

Learning Spanish Forum - Ask a Tutor
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I’m having difficulties with a phrase in the Spanish language lessons,

“Getting Started, lesson 6. Vocabulario.”

The problem phrase, word really, is: "Si tienes preguntas, puedes hacerselas al tutor.” It is hacerselas which I’m finding difficulty with.

When I hit “hint” to get the Google translators version I think the internet blew a gasket! It didn’t translate hacerselas. I did a search and found the following which didn’t help much:

‘hacérselas is an enclitic form of Spanish verb hacer
English translation: To prepare them’

I went back to Google Translate, after giving the IT community time to replace the blown gasket, and it spat out this:

” If you have questions, you can ask them during tutor.”

That kind of sorta helped; well, not really :slight_smile:

Does anyone have better translation at the ready? For example, could it translate as, “…If you have questions you can bring them to your tutor?” Or something to that effect? I’m not quite sure how to translate ‘hacerselas’ or ‘hacérselas’ to have the phrase make sense in both Spanish and as translated to English.

Gracias.

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Hacerselas has all of these meanings included in the following order “to make - to ‘him’ (the tutor) - them”! Put it together to come up with something like, “If you have questions, you can make them to a tutor.” Of course, in English we phrase it differently and actually say, “If you have questions, you can ask a tutor.”

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Wow, that is horrendously awkward. Literally it means “You can ask them to the tutor.”

Personally, I would give it no mind. I’ve never seen it in that form before and probably never will again. Just ignore it. What follows is the long and short explanations about how to proceed if you wish.

Short assistance:

“Puedes hacerlas al tutor” OR “Puedes preguntar al tutor” is fine and BETTER versions of “You can ask the questions to the tutor.”

Long (and literal) answer why:

HacerME una pregunta - to ask ME a question.

HacerTE una pregunta - to ask YOU a question.

HacerLE una pregunta - to ask HIM/HER a question

HacerSE una pregunta - to ask ONESELF a question.

Now for the extra awkwardness of the subject your inquiry

HacermeLA - to ask it (“La,” the pregunta) to me.

HacerteLA - to ask it (“La,” the pregunta) to you.

*******>>>>>>HacerseLA - to ask it (“La,” the pregunta) to him.

By rights, it should be HacerLELA, "to ask it (“La,” the pregunta) to him. However, in Spanish, you are not allowed to put the third person indirect object pronoun “LE” next to the direct object pronoun “LO” or “LA.” Therefore they have to say, “se lo,” or “se la” instead of “le lo” or “le la.”

GOING FORWARD BY WAY OF BACKGROUND:

Pedir means “to ask” (for something)

Preguntar means “to ask” (a question). So does “Hacer una pregunta.” It also means “to ask a question.”

Hacer on its own means “to do” or “to make.”

Hacerse means literally, “to make oneself” or, stated more easily, “to become.”

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