Verb + preposition: a question about expressing ideas in Spanish
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Verb + preposition: a question about expressing ideas in Spanish

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language learning

La mayoría de esta entrada está en inglés, pero un poco está en español.

It's my understanding that English has a lot of prepositions. Prepositions are powerful: trading one for another is likely either incorrect, or will dramatically change the meaning of a sentence. I appreciate them for their expressivity and am glad that I don't have to learn them, but at the same time I don't know how to convey certain concepts in Spanish without a trove of prepositions to pull from.

Here I want to highlight examples with 2 prepositions: at and to.

I threw the ball to my sister.

I threw the ball with the intention that my sister catch it

She talked to me over the phone.

We had a phone conversation

I threw the ball at my sister.

I threw the ball in the direction of my sister, with the hope of hitting her.

She talked at me (ad nauseam) over the phone.

My sister and I were on the phone, but she basically spoke non-stop without any regard for me. I could have put the phone down for an hour, come back and she wouldn't have noticed. (I added ad nauseam here because in this example I think we would normally add some indication of time, that is, how long did we endure being talked at)

In my limited Spanish, I can say:

Le tiré la pelota a mi hermana. (I think this says "I threw the ball to my sister")

Ella me habló por teléfono. (I think this says "She talked to me over the phone")

But how can I throw the ball at somebody? And how can I talk at someone?

Headline image by schmig on Unsplash

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