Siga a ese coche.

Why the “a” when the object is not a person?

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Siga is because it’s the formal imperative (i.e. giving commands, but politely, as if addressing a person as “usted”). The object of the sentence is irrelevant for choosing which ending to use, the relevant distinction here is whether the person you are giving the command to is someone you would address as “Tú” or as “Usted”.

Informal (i.e. “tú”) would be “Sigue a ese coche.” You can remember this because the form for the formal is the same as the subjunctive (i.e. “e” changes to “a” and vice versa), whereas the form for the casual is the same as the indicative, and the subjunctive is one of the ways many languages use to “soften” language and thus increase its formality.

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I think the question related to the use of the preposition a. :slight_smile:

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Oops, sorry I misunderstood this. Sorry, I don’t have a good answer for this, perhaps someone else could chime in.

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My dictionary states siga (a) ese coche, so it appears that its optional. Also, I previously asked a very similar question about:

Él levantó la mano para parar a un taxi.

So my guess is with verbs of moment, e.g. going, coming, following and stopping Spanish speakers like to throw in a preposition - sometimes grammarians say it’s required, other times not so much.

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