"a" + infinitive verb = confusion
 

This has been baffling me for a quite a while now. It's a frequent construction, so I find it annoying that I don't know how to use it. I'm only able to read it, and understand the meaning.

This is taken from a Spanish reader I found, third line:

"Aprendo la aritmética, a leer y a escribir."
I learn arithmetics, to read and to write.

Why is a used in this sentence together with both leer and escribir? I thought that leer and escribir in themselves meant to read and to write, so it seems for me like a doubling of the to. I know that it may "just be like that," but I'd wish to learn the usage of it, so that I would be able to write such sentences myself.

Personally, I would just do it like:

Aprendo la aritmética, leer y escribir.

Thanks!

Aprender, followed by an infinitive, always requires the 'a'. The first object, la aritmética, isn't an infinitive. You know the other two objects are.

In another post someone asked why the 'a' (which is usually translated as 'to') has to be there in the first place. They were wondering why an infinitive, which means to do something, would have need of the redundant to ('a'). I explained that only the English translation of the infinitive contains the word 'to'. The Spanish infinitive can't always stand on its own, but it does in certain constructs. So, you have a learning curve.

Quiero aprender. = I want to learn.
Quiero hablar. = I want to speak.
Quiero aprender a hablar bien. = I want to learn to speak well.
Quiero aprender a caminar y a masticar chicle a la vez. = I want to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. :)

So, basically, I would need to learn whether a transitive verb does need a, or not?
Just like I need to know what gender a noun has.

Yep. Here is a list of verbs that require the preposition 'a' before an infinitive object.

Oh, so much to remember! :p

Thank you for the link. Do you know whether or not the list is complete?

As with any list I find, I hope it is exhaustive (but this one probably isn't).

Don't forget to check out the 'a + object' link on the same page. That gives a list of verbs that require the 'a' before an object (not an infinitive).

I was asking because you often find lists with irregular verbs, and often they are incomplete, because there are so many of them. And yeah, I noticed the other page as well, thanks.

What don't you understand, jchen?