¿Por qúe "difícil de aprender" y no "difícil a aprender"?
En la frase
“Inglés es más difícil de aprender que español.”
¿Por qúe, si esta frase es correcto, utilizamos “de” y no “a”?
In this phrase (if it is correct), why do we use “de” and not “a”?
3 Answers
difícil adjetivo 1 (que cuesta trabajo o esfuerzo intelectual) difficult, hard
Same with fácil, whenever they have this meaning, they are followed by "de"
First of all, the English "to" used with infinitives, such as "to eat", does not exist in Spanish, because its function is to indicate that it is an infinitive, and not a conjugated form, such as "I eat". In Spanish we can tell the difference from the ending (I eat = como, to eat = comer), so we don't have a need to use "to". The only cases where "to" translates as "a" is when it indicates direction (plus other cases I won't list here).
Secondly, the construction is different. The key word is "difícil", and "de aprender" is a modifier of "difícil", exactly like "de agua" in "vaso de agua" (notice that both use "de"). Bear in mind that infinitives in Spanish are nouns, which is why "agua" and "aprender" use both "de". Why do you say "glass of water" but not "hard of learn"? Or, conversely, why don't you say "glass to water" if you say "hard to learn"? The reason is because English uses "to" for things that don't exist in Spanish, where the syntactic constructions are generally more regular.
It is correct. The basic constructs are:
es dificil de (inf) = it is difficult to (inf)
(noun) es más (adj/adv) que (noun) = (noun) is more (adj/adv) than (noun)
and they are mixed together in your sentence.
