Impact on Spanish speakers if personal "a" is omitted

Question

This may be a stupid question, but anyway.

If I take the sentence "How quickly do we forget the victims of war", "Qué pronto se olvida a las víctimas de la guerra" I am curious how the sentence would be perceived by a Spanish speaker if the personal 'a' were omitted.

PS in some of the examples one finds of the personal 'a' the verb escuchar is used, but, in English, we say "listen to" so the use of an 'a' is necessary with this verb.

:) - ian-hill, Sep 26, 2015

I could not stand it just kiddin in some cases it's very notorious and would sound very strange but in others it would pass unnoticed for example in this case :) - Pablo064, Sep 27, 2015

Answer 1

This may be a stupid answer, but anyway.

If I take the sentence "How quickly do we forget the victims of war", "Qué pronto se olvida a las víctimas de la guerra" I am curious how the sentence would be perceived by an English speaker if the 'to' were added.(forget to the victims).

Ya que en español es necesario poner "a" cuando nos referimos a personas no veo porque en inglés no es necesario ponerlo siempre

English and Spanish are languages not Mathematics

How would you translate the "a" into English amigo? - ian-hill, Sep 26, 2015

"to" i translate it as "a" or "para". - 000a35ff, Sep 26, 2015

That's the problem, I wouldn't translate the 'a' into English, except with verbs like decir and escuchar. - mojac, Sep 26, 2015

So, mojac, that's that. Exactly txelis point. ;) - chileno, Sep 26, 2015

Precisely,it sounds wrong and foreign, although not necessarily incomprehensible. ;) - bosquederoble, Sep 26, 2015

Answer 2

Como escribí, fue probablemente una pregunta estúpida. ¿Puedo poner la cuestión de manera diferente? ¿Qué mal suena,; Cómo grande un error si no se incluye la 'a'?