Breakdown of Sempre que o duque chega, a nobreza fá-lo esperar.
fazer
to do
esperar
to wait
chegar
to arrive
o
him/it (m)
Questions & Answers about Sempre que o duque chega, a nobreza fá-lo esperar.
Why do we use -lo (accusative) here instead of -lhe (dative) for "makes him"?
This is the rule for causative verbs like fazer (to make/cause). Because the action he is being made to do, esperar (to wait), is intransitive and takes no direct object of its own, the person being made to do it takes the accusative direct object pronoun (o, which becomes -lo). If the embedded verb were transitive—for example, making him read a letter—he would become the indirect object, taking the dative pronoun -lhe (e.g., fá-lhe ler a carta).
Why does faz + o become fá-lo?
When an accusative pronoun like o, a, os, or as attaches to a verb ending in -r, -s, or -z, that final consonant drops and the pronoun adds an L (becoming -lo, -la, etc.). Here, faz loses its z. To keep the open vowel sound of the original word, an acute accent is added to the a, resulting in fá-lo.
Why is chega in the indicative mood rather than the subjunctive?
The phrase sempre que (whenever / every time that) takes the indicative when it describes a habitual, recurring fact in the present or past. We would only use the subjunctive here if we were talking about a future, hypothetical arrival.