Spanish Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, teachers, students and Spanish language enthusiasts in general wanting to discuss the finer points of the language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I was recently staying with a Mexican family, and during lunch, the children (ages 8 and 5) were being rather unruly. The grandmother would command them: ¡A comer!
I have never heard a command in this grammatical form. What is the use of this form of a (psuedo?) command? How commonly is this used?
It's a shorten form of "pongamonos a comer".
The verb is "poner" in its imperative form:
tú:
ponte a + infinitive
nostros:
pongamonos a + infinitive
ustedes:
ponganse a + infinitive
Examples:
¡A trabajar!
¡Ponte a trabajar!
¡Pongamonos a trabajar!
RAE defines this use:
41 . prnl. Comenzar a ejecutar una determinada acción. Ponerse A escribir, A estudiar.
So basically it means "to begin doing something".
In the shorten form depending on the context you can infer the pronoun. In your example because it was a family and most family eat together the pronoun was "nosotros" thus "pongamonos a comer".
In its imperative form it is used to command. I don't know if it is used in all Spanish speaking countries but at least in Mexico is used.
It is definitively a VERY common form.
(Ve) ¡A dormir!
(Empecemos) ¡A correr! ¡Huyamos!
(?) ¡A callar!
(ponte)¡A trabajar!
I feel it is oft used to interrupt an activity in favor of what you command, immediatly.
