One of my pet peeves in English is when a speaker does NOT clear up ambiguity when using pronouns. For example:
Mary and Elizabeth went to the store. She bought an apple.
In the above sentence, it is not clear who bought the apple. This is because 'she' could refer to either Mary or Elizabeth. Drives me crazy!
Now, quite often in Spanish, pronouns are omitted because the subject is implied by the conjugation of the verb. However, things can become ambiguous when speaking in the third person. Let's examine the following excerpt from the book "El Quijote: Para estudiantes de español":
Pensó Don Quijote que el mundo le necesitaba. ... En ese momento recordó que no podía entrar en batalla. No había sido armado caballero. Según las leyes de caballería no podía luchar con nadie hasta que no fuese armado caballero. Decidió que el primer caballero andante que encontrase le armaría caballero.
The bolded text is where I find the ambiguity. Being that I'm still a beginner with the language, it took me several readings to understand this. I believe it means:
He (don Quijote) decided that the first knight that he (don Quijote) met would arm him (don Quijote) with knighthood.
So, it took me a while to understand that the 'le' in 'le armaría caballero' refers to don Quijote, and does not refer to the errant knight.
Does such ambiguity present a problem to native speakers of Spanish? Or is this a problem merely for language learners like me? Is there a way to express the bolded text in manner that is more clear?
I'm thinking someone might post an answer saying, "There is no ambiguity to the brain of a native Spanish speaker. The direct and indirect objects of the sentence is obvious."