Breakdown of ¿Que si se lo he mencionado al yerno?
a
to
que
that (relative pronoun, conjunction)
lo
it / him (m)
se
to/for him, her, them (before another object pronoun)
si
if
haber
to have (auxiliary)
mencionar
to mention
el yerno
the son-in-law
Questions & Answers about ¿Que si se lo he mencionado al yerno?
Why does this question start with Que si?
If the sentence already says al yerno (to the son-in-law), why do we also need se at the beginning?
This is called indirect object doubling. Even though al yerno explicitly tells us who is receiving the action, Spanish strongly prefers (and often requires) keeping the indirect object pronoun (se in this case) before the verb alongside it.
Wait, the indirect object pronoun for 'to him' is le. Why is it se lo instead of le lo?
You are right that 'to him' is normally le. However, Spanish has a strict rule: whenever le or les comes immediately before an object pronoun starting with L (like lo, la, los, or las), it changes to se. This happens simply to avoid the awkward sound of le lo.
Could I use the simple past here and say mencioné instead of he mencionado?
You could, but in Spain, the present perfect (he mencionado) is heavily preferred for actions that happened recently or are still highly relevant to the present conversation. If this is recent news, he mencionado is much more natural.
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