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El niño ayuda al señor en la calle.

El niño ayuda al señor en la calle.
The boy helps the gentleman in the street.
From Lesson 27:The personal 'a' (a)·Spanish (Spain)

Questions & Answers about El niño ayuda al señor en la calle.

The current lesson is about question words. How would I ask "Where does the boy help the gentleman?"
You would use the word for "where", which is dónde, and put it at the beginning. The question becomes ¿Dónde ayuda el niño al señor? Notice that in Spanish questions, the subject (el niño) often switches places to go after the verb (ayuda).
If I want to ask who the boy is helping, can I use qué?
No, qué means "what" or "which". Since we are asking about a person, you need to use quién (who). Also, in Spanish, you must put the "personal a" right before the question word when asking about a person receiving an action. The correct question would be ¿A quién ayuda el niño?
Why does the sentence say al señor instead of just el señor?
This happens because of two rules coming together. First, Spanish uses an extra word called the "personal a" before a specific person who is receiving an action (like being helped). That gives us ayuda a el señor. Second, whenever the words a and el are next to each other, they must squish together into the single word al.
Why is it en la calle instead of a la calle?
The word en translates to "in" or "on" and is used to talk about location, meaning where something is happening right now. The word a usually means "to" and is used when there is movement towards a destination. Since the boy is doing the helping physically in the street, we use en.

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