Hola chic@s,
Espero que estén bien.
Today I want to look at one tiny letter in Spanish.
‘a’.
More specifically, the personal a.
I’m not going to cover the full grammar explanation today.
Instead, I want to show you something I only really appreciated recently.
Something I find rather beautiful.
Let’s have a look at these two sentences:
Veo el coche
I see the car
Veo a Juan
I see Juan
Notice something?
In English, the structure is basically the same.
I see the car.
I see Juan.
But Spanish makes a distinction.
Juan gets an ‘a’ in front of his name.
There’s something about this distinction that I love.
Grammatically, both el coche and Juan are direct objects.
But Spanish doesn’t treat the person and the thing in exactly the same way.
The personal a is a nice little reminder that there’s a person on the other side of your Spanish.
When we’re chatting Spanish, it’s easy to get stuck in our own heads.
Did I say that correctly?
How did that sound?
But we can move our attention in the other direction.
Who is this person?
What can I learn about them?
Which reminds us of one of the Chat Spanish principles:
People before perfection.
Keep getting out there, chic@s.
Un abrazo,
Harrison
Spanish for living, not just learning
P.S - You can find the full grammar explanation in the short ‘personal a’ handbook.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Chat Spanish?
Chat Spanish is an evolving resource to help you stop learning Spanish and start living it. It’s designed for Spanish learners of all abilities and provides a lot of free resources to support you on your adventure.
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You can improve your Spanish in many different ways with Chat Spanish. There’s a weekly newsletter, which includes a bite-sized Spanish lesson, a back log of blog articles, grammar explanations on Youtube, a free tool to help you practice conjugating the most common Spanish verbs and the Chat Spanish Handbook that covers everything you need to know about the beautiful language.
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Chat Spanish was created to provide free resources to help people on their journey of learning the greatest language in the world. It’s an antidote to the disconnected, dopamine-fuelled, algorithmic world we find ourselves in and is a place to connect with others and remind yourself what it means to be a human through living Spanish, rather than just learning it.