Quote:
Originally Posted by Rusty
Remember, the personal 'a' is not a preposition.
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Actually
"a" is a preposition. It's considered a preposition in Spanish grammar. The term
"personal 'a' " was probably coined by some English grammarian. It's a term never used in Spanish. No one mentions
" 'a' personal" in any grammar book in Spanish that I know.
I understand that the term helps students and comes
very handy when explaining the usage of "a".
Anyway,
"a" is a preposition and one of it uses is to precede the Object when it is a person. The DRAE explains it better than me, of course:
a2.
(Del lat. ad).
1. prep. Precede a determinados complementos verbales, como el complemento indirecto y el complemento directo cuando este es de persona determinada o está de algún modo personificado.
Legó su fortuna a los pobres. Respeta a los ancianos. El gato persigue a un ratón.
I hope it helped.
Quote:
Perikles = This is confusing when the Latin a, ab which takes the ablative case, is still extant in Romance languages, for example French à indicating an indirect object, and even more confusing, Spanish a introducing the indirect object such as in le escribió una carta a su padre.
The above is just me thinking aloud.
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You got it right when talking about the DO.. But.. don't you say
"he wrote a letter to his father"?
No matter which way you put it, that "a" has to exist in Spanish.
If you say:
"Le escribió una carta su padre" you're saying that "his father wrote him a letter".
"Una carta le escribió su padre" = same thing.
In English you could say (not used, but you could say it):
"To his father he wrote a letter". Same thing in Spanish.
I know, it doesn't work with every verb in English, but I thought this could be a good example to make it a little more understandable..
Spanish word order is so flexible that in its simplicity (what can be simpler than being able to write a sentence with the words almost in any order and still make sense?) it can make life miserable sometimes..