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I am taking a course and we are supposed to translate the following sentence to Spanish

She plays tennis better than her cousin.

I translated this as

Ella juega el tenis mejor que su primo.

The correct answer is

Ella juega al tenis mejor que su primo.

Why is "al" used instead of "el?" I am accustomed to seeing "al" as a contraction for "a + el." That does not seem to work here.

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The point is that "jugar" can be transitive or intransitive in Spanish, without any change of meaning in the mentioned context.

As a transitive verb, it can be used as follows:

  • Ella juega tenis. (Ella lo juega)

In the sentence above, "tenis" is the direct object of transitive "juega".

However, as an intransitive verb "jugar" takes the preposition "a" followed by the article corresponding to the game or sport that follows (el, la). Under (3) in RAE's dictionary, we find in fact this definition and these examples for intransitive "jugar":

  1. intr. Entretenerse, divertirse tomando parte en uno de los juegos sometidos a reglas, medie o no en él interés. Jugar A la pelota, AL dominó.

I'd also add the plural article, for example: jugar a LAS damas, jugar a LOS dados (play checkers, play dice).

In all of the examples above, "a" + article is the only possible pattern. I think we can only use "jugar" both transitively and intransitively mainly with sports.

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  • Being as I have not had an English grammar class in 55 years. I have to confess to being a bit stupefied by your answer. Given that I am trying to learn Spanish at a basic level, it is particularly hard to apply the RAE dictionary info. However, I greatly appreciate your time. Still, I remain confused. To me the sentence I was translating "She plays tennis better than her cousin," uses the transitive verb "plays" and the indirect object "tennis." The intransitive case using "al" does not seem like it applies given your explanation.
    – Robert
    Commented Jul 10, 2019 at 16:45
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There are a some reasons for this

First - You have to notice here that there's no article "the" in the question that can be translated to "el", with these it would be correctly translated like this:

Ella juega tenis mejor que su primo

Secondly - when speaking about playing sports, in certain areas (mostly in Spain) you would add "al" before the sport.

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    Use of the preposition ‘a’ + the article is standard grammar, it’s not exclusive to certain areas, as explained by Gustavson’s answer.
    – Traveller
    Commented Jul 8, 2019 at 21:29
  • Thanks! I was wondering about using "el" when I put it in my translation for the very reason you mentioned. Still, why they used "al" is a mystery. I wish they left it as you did and then it would have made perfect sense to me.
    – Robert
    Commented Jul 10, 2019 at 16:49

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