¿Le dolía la encía? Dígale al dentista nomás.
Was the gum hurting you? Go ahead and tell the dentist.
Breakdown of ¿Le dolía la encía? Dígale al dentista nomás.
a
to
le
to him / to her / to you (formal)
doler
to hurt / to ache
decir
to say, to tell
nomás
just (simply) / go ahead
el dentista
dentist
la encía
gum (anatomy)
Questions & Answers about ¿Le dolía la encía? Dígale al dentista nomás.
What exactly does nomás add to this sentence? Why not just say Dígale al dentista?
In Latin America, adding nomás after a command acts as an encourager or a way to soften the instruction. Without it, Dígale al dentista ("Tell the dentist") can sound a bit abrupt or commanding. Adding nomás translates to something like "Go ahead and tell the dentist" or "Just tell the dentist," making it sound supportive and friendly rather than bossy.
Why do we have both le (in Dígale) and al dentista in the same sentence? Aren't they the same person?
Yes, they both refer to the dentist! Spanish frequently uses a "redundant" indirect object pronoun (le) even when the actual indirect object (al dentista) is explicitly stated. In fact, when the indirect object is a specific person introduced by a, including the pronoun is generally required in everyday speech.
Why is dolía in the imperfect tense rather than the preterite (dolió)?
The imperfect dolía is used here because the speaker is asking about an ongoing condition or background state in the past—the gum was aching over a period of time leading up to this moment. If they used the preterite dolió, it would sound like a sudden, isolated pain that happened once and finished.
Why is it la encía (the gum) instead of su encía (your gum)?
In Spanish, when talking about body parts, you almost always use the definite article (la, el, los, las) instead of a possessive adjective (su, tu) when it's clear who the body part belongs to. The pronoun le in Le dolía already tells us whose gum is hurting, so saying su encía would sound unnatural.
How do we know the speaker is using formal address here?
The speaker is addressing someone formally using usted. We can see this in two places: the indirect object pronoun le in Le dolía (which here means "was hurting you [formal]") and the formal command form Dígale (if it were the informal tú, it would be dile).
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