Use of 'a'

Use of 'a'
 

Hi....

Just on level one on Rosetta Stone. I'm having trouble understanding the following sentence.

El padre abraza a su hijo.

I understand the meaning of this to be: the father hugs his son

1) Is this correct?
2) What does the 'a' represent if abraza = hugs and su hijo = his son

Thanks a lot for your help!

Is one of those things you have to accustom yourself to.

Have you ever heard or seen a Spanish person say or write the same but in English.

When learning, most likely he or she will write it as "The father hugs to his son" :)

The 'a' is called a 'personal a'. Some verbs require it when the direct object is a person. It doesn't translate to English. You'll encounter it a lot.

@Lyla: It's a rule for direct object (which are the complements for transitive verbs).
"The son" receives the action of the verb "to hug".

In Spanish, when the direct object is a person or a proper name of person or animal, one must use the preposition "a" before them.

Juan abraza un poste en la calle.
Juan hugs a pole in the street.

Juan abraza a Pedro.
Juan hugs Pedro.

Juan abraza a Solovino, su perro.
Juan hugs Solovino, his dog.

This use of a is by the way extremely confusing for the student, and in my experience very badly explained by grammar books.

There is a natural instinct (for some English) to identify a to mean to and thus indicating an indirect object.

But a has several functions. I list them here not to dazzle the beginner, but to show just how difficult it can be:

1. Personal 'a': (this is the use explained in this thread)

Direct object, accusative:
Vi ayer a Juan I saw Juan yesterday

2. 'a' introducing an indirect object
Dative:
Mateo dio un beso a su madre
Mateo gave his mother a kiss
literally : Mateo (subject) gave a kiss (direct object) to his mother (indirect object)

3. 'a' expressing direction towards

Fuimos al cine we went to the cinema

4. 'a' expressing location (time or place)

a las cinco at five o'clock
a diez kilómetros de Madrid ten kilometres from Madrid

5. 'a' expressing rate

poco a poco little by little

6. 'a' expressing manner

tortilla a la española

There are possibly more functions lurking somewhere. :thinking:

I'm overwhelmed...
 

by everyone's help. Thank you so much for your time and effort. I'm determined to continue on this venture to learn another language, at an older age, despite all I read about how much harder it is to learn another language as you age. Forums like this will help me to 'understand' and not become a traveling parrot.

Thanks again!!

That's the spirit!

Remember you can read, write and express yourself in your language. All you have to do is to equate that to Spanish, it isn't hard at all.

After seeing Perikle's list, I hope you do not desist... ;)

Please, do not try to learn the grammar now, because it will make the process longer. Specially if you do not know much of your own grammar. if you know you grammar, then postpone the learning of Spanish grammar as your grammar skills will be very useful later on.

:D