Is there a direct way (not using a loop) of accessing the different characters of the strings that form a list?

For example:

```
L=['hola','que','tal']

```

How would I directly access for example to the second element of the third string? [i.e. 'a']. In the same line, how would I directly access to the first two elements of each string to create the new list 

```
S=['ho','qu','ta']

```

I would expect something like `L[2][1]` in the first case and similarly `L[:][:2]` but it is obviously incorrect.