"Ellos nos escriben un libro."

Translation: They write us a book.

[fuspey]

They write a book to us / They write us a book....
Neither sound correct in English, "They write a book FOR us" sounds correct.

[Talca]

Yes, and many newbies forget that the indirect object pronouns can be translated into English as for us or to us.

[electriczain]

I'm definetly not a newbie (in Minecraft noob). All my skills are gold (except for this one) and I still don't understand

[sarah.nels]

I don't understand where us comes from.

[jfGor]

In this sentence 'nos' means 'to us or for' and is an indirect object pronoun. In English we sometimes leave out the 'to or for'. So :

Ellos=They

escriben=write

nos=to/for us

un libro=a book

[LynnaePhLy]

This is the explanation I needed to understand. Thank you

[Jeff_Brown1]

Does the subject pronoun (in this case ellos) always need to be included? I have been taught just to write leo un libro, rather than yo leo un libro.

[JR777300]

I have this question too. Did you get a response? Been trolling all the answers to hopefully find something but never did.

[hnomaha]

If I understand your question correctly, no it is not required, it is only needed for clarification, as the verb "escribir" conjugated to "escriben" could refer to ellos, ellas, or ustedes. Think of the phrase "Te amo" (I love you). One could say "Yo te amo", but the yo is unnecessary as the only possible person that can be referenced with the conjugation "amo" is "yo". But in this sentence "Ellos nos escriben un libro", without the "Ellos" it would be unclear as to whether They (those guys) write us a book, or They (those gals) write us a book, or You all write us a book.

[JR777300]

Thanks! Yes that was what I was meaning.
Even ellos could be dropped though if you were clearly talking about a "they" in the masc form.

My South American friend told me that fingers are great for clearing up these matters too ;)

[FabianSchn1]

these exercises are incredibly dull somehow. why not use a larger variety of verbs and objects?

[JR777300]

Not just that, but would also help cement some of the other verbs in our head. I know walk, run, drink, write, read, see, hear, eat and cook really well.... but none of the others!
It would require a heck of a lot of work on their end though.

[donpeor]

Why don't I need to write "A" in front of "Ellos?"

[caiser]

Because ellos is the subject, the personal a is used with the object: "Ellos nos escriben un libro a nosotros"

[cf2424]

This sentence seems to be missing something that the other "writing book" sentences contain. Ella le escribe un libro a él. So shouldn't this be "ellos nos escriben un libro a nosotros?" Or is it also correct to say " ella le escribe un libro" for those other phrases?

[jfGor]

@ct2424 Yes the a él is there to clarify just like rmcgwn said, because we don't know what the pronoun "le' stands for. When we use 'nos' we know it means 'us'. There is no need to clarify.

[rmcgwn]

I believe it depends if clarification is required.

[NolaJay]

From what I know of this subject (and it's not much!)...

Ella le escribe un libro a él = She writes a book to him (specifiying who exactly she is writing the book to).

Ella le escribe un libro = She writes him a book (more general).

I think you would get away with both phrases unless you're specifying "him"

I hope this clears it up a bit!

[desertpelican]

Why it shows this sentence as "Gemeinsam lesen wir das Buch" ? it does not look and sound like Spanish. I am very confused.

[pink100j]

That isn't Spanish. It is most likely a glitch with your device. ☺

[awrigh00]

Sentence does not really make sense, letter instead of book would make more sense.

[Marlene772400]

I wrote the correct translation and it was said to be wrong!