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[Rick Mc Callister]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

>Growing up in a Spanish family in Holland, certain Dutchisms
>tended to creep into our (my siblings and mine's) speech, which
>my father was constantly combatting.  One of them was saying "Voy
>a Juan" [I go to John] (Dutch "Ik ga naar Jan toe"), which my
>father always corrected to "Voy a ver a Juan" [I'm going to see
>John] or "Voy a casa de Juan" [I'm going to John's house].  It
>seems that Castilian also doesn't normally allow a
>locative/directional preposition followed directly by an animate
>noun (phrase).

You don't say "Voy donde Juan"?
[lit. "go-I where John"]
"I'm going to John's"
It's very common in Central American Spanish
and shows up in a few places in South America
but not, evidently, in Mexico or the Caribbean
and I've wondered what part of Spain it came from

They also use "cuando" similarly
"?Vos recorda's cuando Franco?"
"Do you remember back in the days of Franco?"

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
MUW
Columbus MS 39701
rmccalli at sunmuw1.muw.edu