the (a la and a) in a sentence?
I'm currently reviewing this page in my spanish book but the examples are baffling me.
There's this example that says Va usted a casa, Sr. Mendez? and another one that says: Van ustedes al cine? and another one that says: Vamos a la estacion?
I understood the translation but I'm confused because I don't know when should I use the "a la" and when to use the "a" on its own. And do we use "usted and ustedes" when we are talking directly to the target? That's what I understood from the example?
2 Answers
"Casa" is a tricky one. "¿Va usted a casa?" asks if he is going home, whereas "¿Va usted a la casa?" asks if he is going to the house.
Yes, we use usted and ustedes to refer to the people to whom we are speaking... or we omit them when the context makes it obvious who is the he/she/it/they performing the action of the verb. If Jorge says "Voy al cine," you can ask "¿Va solo?" without the usted.
Every noun has an article (f,m), right?
So in "casa" the article is "la" (feminine): "la casa" (as a huge tip, I noticed that most of the nouns in Spanish finishing with "a" have the article "la" (again, there are tons of exceptions, but at least 70% of the time, give or take, you will be right if you use "la" on nouns ending with "a", is just my humble appreciation as Spanish native).
In your example, "going to the house" doesn't alter the article, because it starts with consonant: "(Yo) voy a la casa). But when the article starts with vowel, it changes and creates a contraction, take a look:
"Dale de comer al gato" (feed the cat).
In this case, "gato" has the article "el" (he), but if you say "dale de comer a el gato" (which is a mistake VERY common even among Spanish people, just to let you know), you notice that the "a" and the "e" on "el" cannot be together (there is an exception of course, but in that case we use quotations marks to remark this particularity in "a el": "Dale de comer a "el gato""). So, in "a el gato", we omit the "e" on the article, and only say "al gato".
Other examples (look at the capital letters):
Dale el juguete AL niño (give the toy TO THE kid).
Cántale una canción A LA tristeza (sing a song TO THE sadness).
Vamos A LA playa (Let's go TO THE beach).
As you can see, the problem is that in English does not exist any discrimination between feminine or masculine at this concern. We (Spanish people) have a pretty similar problem with "his" and "hers", because we only have one word in Spanish, which is "su" (property of someone), and we use this word indistinctly of the gender of the person.
::::::::
Tú = one person (same age or YOUNGER than the persons that speaks*).
Usted = one person (same age or OLDER than the person that speaks*).
Ustedes = two or more people.
*Difference between "tú" and "usted": in Spanish (in México at least, and generally speaking) we use "you" to refer to a young person or someone already our friend, and we use "usted" to refer to elderly people or to speak with respect to someone recently introduced, that's why is VERY common the question "¿puedo hablarle de "tú"? (may I refer to you as "tú"), or in some cases people is going to say "háblame de tú", which means "please refer to me as "tú" (not "usted")". The plural, in both cases ("tú" and "usted"), is always "ustedes".
