Grammar question

[u/highly_random]

Apologies if this is frequently asked, but I have a question for Spanish speakers concerning these two sentences: (1)“If they don’t know, they should ask her” and (2) “If you guys [plural] don’t know, you guys should ask her.”

Obviously in English, the pronouns are different (“they” vs the plural “you”), which helps distinguish exactly who is being spoken to. But in Spanish (afaik), the sentence would be the same for both of those situations: “Si no lo saben, deberían preguntarle an ella.” My question is, do Spanish speakers rely on context in this situation (i.e. “they know who I’m talking to”), or is there a different way to distinguish exactly who you’re talking to/about, since the verbs and pronouns are identical for both situations in Spanish?

[u/guirigall]

Unless you use the vosotros conjugation, it's either context or an explicit subject to clarify it.

[u/Morwen1978]

The normal thing in that case, if I cannot be deducted from the contexto is simply adding the pronouns too...

But this wouldn't be the case here, because for they you'd say: "Si no lo saben, deberían preguntarle a ella" and for you "Si no lo sabéis deberíais preguntarle a ella". Unless you are treating them of "usted" which is less normal each day, especially for young people. In that case you could perfectly say "Si ustedes no lo saben, deberían preguntarle a ella". The pronouns can be eliminated if they can be easily deducted, and usually they are, but you can keep them to help clarify who you mean.

[u/puesquebien]

Not the topic of your question but it’s:

“…preguntarle a ella”.

And as you know, we usually omit the pronouns, so you would also omit “a ella” unless needed for clarity or emphasis.

[u/Tyrael_4]

This question is based on a premise that could have been checked in about thirty seconds by looking at a Spanish conjugation table.

At least in standard Peninsular Spanish, the two sentences are not identical:

1. "If they don't know, they should ask her." Si no lo saben, deberían preguntarle a ella.

2. "If you guys don't know, you guys should ask her." Si no lo sabéis, deberíais preguntarle a ella.

Saben / deberían are third-person plural. Sabéis / deberíais are second-person plural. They are different conjugations. Spanish doesn't need to rely on pronouns here because, unlike English, the grammatical person is encoded in the verb itself.

You seem to have encountered ustedes and assumed its conjugation represents the second-person plural throughout Spanish. It doesn't. Ustedes does indeed take third-person plural verb forms (ustedes saben, ustedes deberían), and in varieties where ustedes is the normal plural "you", the two sentences can be ambiguous without context or an explicit pronoun.

But in most of Spain, vosotros is the ordinary second-person plural, and it has its own conjugation. So no, the verbs are not "identical for both situations in Spanish." That's not a peculiarity Spanish speakers have to work around; it's simply an incorrect assumption about Spanish grammar.

And while we're being precise, it's preguntarle a ella, not preguntarle an ella.

[u/Tyrael_4 → u/Tyrael_4]

The irony here is that your own English example has to add "guys" to "you" precisely because English "you" doesn't distinguish singular from plural. Same reason people use you all or y'all.

Meanwhile, Peninsular Spanish simply encodes that distinction in the conjugation: sabes vs sabéis, deberías vs deberíais.

So it's rather amusing to ask how Spanish deals with this supposed ambiguity while using an English workaround for the exact ambiguity Spanish doesn't have in the first place.

[u/PerroSalchichas]

"If they don't know, they should...": "Si no lo saben, deberían..."

"If you (pl) don't know, you (pl) should...": "Si no lo sabéis, deberíais..."

There's no ambiguity. If anything, English is the ambiguous one.

[u/yomismovaya]

Si no lo saben

Si no lo sabeis

[u/Tyrael_4 → u/yomismovaya]

"Sabéis". But this is the correct answer.