When do we use "a" besides when we say "to?"

Question

I've seen some sentences that use the letter "a" but don't mean "to." For example,

"Onozco a Sofía, quien tiene dos coches. (I know Sophia, who has two cars.) "

And one I found in a Spanish textbook: "Este panel titulado "Emiliano Zapata" representa a Zapata..."

Answer 1

Hello unbelievable,

Spanish preps are quite complicated. you may read several text books but still find yourself in the middle of nowhere as far as prepositions are concerned..hahaha ..

As far as "a" is concerned it could mean a lot of different things .. besides it's meaning of "to" ..

For example in the example you have stated above the "a" is actually what is called a "personal a" which signifies that the object of the sentence that follows is a human object ..

If in the same sentence you replace Sofia with some inanimate object the "a" will disappear,

For example ... Puedo ver a Leo desde mi ventana... (Human Object) .. Now look at this one ... Puedo ver la montaña desde mi ventana (Non Human object) ..

Well in the first example Leo is actualy a Dog object but I love him and treat him like a human so I chose to use the personal a just to personify him .. (Can be used with pets) ..

Now another use of the preposition "a" is to indicate the method of doing something .. which can mean "by" in English .. For example ... Vamos al supermercado a pie ... Here you will see that the prep "a" appears twice where the first one appears as a characteristic preposition (which I will discuss later) and the later one tells us the way or the method that the action is being done in .. which is BY foot .. similarly .. El cruzó el mar a nado .. He crossed the sea swimming (where swimming is the way in which he accomplised his task of crossing the sea)..

Then Some verbs have what we call as "charactersitic preopositions" which means that the verb would always be accompanied by a specefic prepositon .. Some go along with"a" and some others have other preps like con or de etc. ... For example .. Ir is always used with "a" as in the example above .. and jugar also takes a always .. here it may not necessarily mean "to" and the meaning may not be apparent and we just have to remember these verbs with their corresponding football .. for example .. Ella juega al futbol todos fines de semana ... here al is the contraction of (a+el) now we can't say .. she plays TO football in english.. So we just have to remember that jugar takes a characteristic preposition and just has to be learnt that way ..

Then the fourth use of "a" is to introduce an indirect object where the indirect object can't be introduced with any other preposition like por or para .. for example .. a mi me gusta ver las películas .... here mi is indirect object being introduced with the help of "a"

Now I need to go to sleep ,, I will write more tomorrow if some thing else comes to my mind..

You take care .. and seek some inspiration from your username because the Spanish Preps are also sort of the same "absolutely unbelievable" ..haha .. Chao ..

Just realized that I never replied to this... But that was incredibly well-written. Learned a lot :D - unbelievable, Oct 6, 2014