French help?

Question

When do you use lui and when you use le to show action to another person.

Ex. Why couldn't you say offre-le instead of offre-lui

Answer 1

le/la/les are for direct object pronouns - things that receive the action.
Ex: "I kissed him."
The guy I'm talking about received the kiss.

lui is only used to represent the person the action is for/to.
For example: Je lui parle (I am talking to him/her).
I am the person doing the action. I'm talking to her.

Basically, if the action is being done to/for someone else, lui is used to represent the "someone else" we're talking about.

Ex: "I threw the ball to him."
The ball is the direct object pronoun because it's receiving action (it's the thing being thrown).
The guy I'm talking about is the indirect object pronoun because the ball is being thrown to him.

Whenever you see a "to" (à in French) in a sentence, then that's a good indicator that you'll need to use an indirect object pronoun.
J'ai lancé la balle à Jimmy.
^That "à" shows you that you would use lui to replace Jimmy.
Je lui ai lancé la balle à Jimmy.
^If you wanted to, you could replace "la balle" with la (direct object pronoun!)
Je lui le ai lancé.

I really hope that made sense.

I'll give you a couple of links in case it didn't.

Answer 2

le is more kind of like, the. Lui would be him. So, you wouldn't offer "the" something. Normally, you should use le when reffering to an object.

Answer 3

Because one is a direct object pronoun, and the other one is an indirect object pronoun.