Nine out of ten times, when a sentence just doesn’t make any flippin’ sense, even though you know all the words, it’s because of the evil workings of a preposition.
Compared to the masses of verbs, nouns and adjectives that exist in a language, the number of prepositions is miniscule. European languages have, on average, what, maybe thirty…? And yet, using those pesky little words correctly takes longer to learn than anything else. It’s also the first thing that goes when you lose regular contact with a language.
English phrasal verbs (which are, essentially, verbs married to prepositions) are infamous for making students despair. Take the verb “to look” as a random example: Look at, look for, look out for, look about, look over, look after… the preposition completely changes the meaning every time. English has thousands of phrasal verbs, including colloquial and regional variations that don’t appear in any dictionary.
To make matters worse, many have several, often completely different meanings depending on context. “To make out” is a prime example. Adding the preposition “on” to the phrasal verb “to go down”, gives it a completely new dimension… 😉
Other languages also have phrasal verbs, and plenty of them, Spanish being no exception. It took me ages to figure out, for example, that “dar con”, which literally translates as “to give with”, actually means “to find/encounter”. Makes no intuitive sense whatsoever!
When people are taught German as a foreign language, they are told that specific prepositions often correspond to specific cases, e.g. “mit” (with) always takes the dative. So, if you don’t know the correct preposition to start with, chances are you’ll get all the noun and adjective endings wrong as well, resulting in an irreparably screwed up sentence.
Even in fairly closely related languages like English and German, prepositions do not correspond. In German, you give “after”, not “in” and you depend “of” someone or something. Not all prepositions exist in every language, making translations cumbersome and learners tear their hair out.
It is generally drilled into students to learn prepositions in conjunction with a set of common verbs, e.g. “to concentrate on” and “to insist on” are a couple of classic examples, where only one preposition is viable, but in most cases, are just too many different possibilities for all of them to be learnt by rote.
In short, the only way to get your prepositions down to a pat is by knowing what sounds ‘right’ and what doesn’t. And this, as some of you will have found out, takes aeons of exposure. In fact, I’d say, that it’s impossible to achieve unless you’ve actually been living for years and years and years in a country where the language is spoken.
I’ve juuuust been going over this with my students. The anger when I explain there are no rules… The only upside is when they make unintentionally hilarious mistakes so I can laugh before returning to despair.
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You should post more about what happens in your classes – I’d love to read that 😉
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I know, I’ve got to start writing stuff down. Some of it is too good.
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Get to it 🙂
Oh, nice shoes/sandals, btw.
I feel a shoe post coming on….
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That’s it. I now have an anxiety attack. I still can’t believe I have learned English well enough to the point where I ‘just know.’ >.<
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THAT makes you anxious??
I’m usually OK, but once I start to think about it, then all is lost, lol.
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But do nine out of ten dentists agree? And now I bet I have a dream tonight that I forgot to take my French final and will fail the course. Twenty years later and I still have nightmares about college.
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Same here!!! I’ve three types of recurring nightmares:
– Am back at school/college sitting an exam (usually Maths, but that can vary)
– Am back at some previous job, with no clue what to do
– Am about to travel somewhere, suitcase not packed, am already late for the flight, and public transport not cooperating
Maybe we should do a blog survey, I bet the above themes are really common!
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I have the school one or I’m being chased and can’t move my legs
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Aw, how unpleasant 😦
Being pursued/chased does come up every once in a while, and having trouble getting away, but it’s not usually due to paralysed legs
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I wonder what the fear is that causes that dream. You should do a post with a survey. I wonder what plagues most of us at night.
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Mosquitoes at the moment…!
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Not too many of those here thank goodness. They love to feast on me!
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Hit the nail on the head with this one – especially when different languages that I’m learning use different prepositions for the same phrases… gah.
(Especially the places where Hebrew wants ‘ב’ for what seems to me to be no frickin’ reason….)
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…and I’ve just printed off FOUR pages worth of Portuguese prepositions…!
Let’s stand in a corner for a bit and cry together.
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Ah, if I had a lat for every time I wrote ‘it depends ___’ on the board. The students all look at me like I’m mentally challenged and say ‘on’ in an exasperated manner. Then proceed to say it depends of, it depends from… every time they use it in a sentence!!
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Yup… ‘knowing’ the rules and applying them in ‘live’ speech is quite a different matter.
You’ve arrived in Rugby and you’re alive, I see 😉
The Dutchman has locked himself into a wardrobe for five weeks, I’m guessing.
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Ha ha, I hope not! He’s coming to visit at the start of August actually – I’ll be meeting his mum…
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We’ll all be waiting with bated breath for THAT post 😉
I hope he’ll enjoy the single bed with penis drawings…
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No boys allowed in the girls’ house 😉
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That’s exactly what I’m referring too, lol.
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We’ll be far too busy having tea and crumpets with his mum to have any penis-related adventures… 😉
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He’ll be delighted to hear that…
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Oops, he’s probably already read this 😉
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I don’t think he has… for A LOT of money, I’m willing to delete the comment….
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Better not – my mum might read it too 😉
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I’m not sure what to make of that…!!!!
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Better she thinks of me as a ‘tea and crumpets with mum girl’ than a ‘penis girl’ 😉 Even though I’m 35 haha!
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I’m starting to suspect she’s always had you down as a bit of a crumpet…
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🙂 I do like a bit of crumpet!
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You’re about as tall as one.
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I’ve been getting that all day from the Brits 😉 That and awful Irish accents and turty tree and a turd ‘jokes’ 😉
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At turdy five, you should have hardened to that by now 😉
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The teachers had our induction today. They tried to ‘jazz it up’ by making us do role plays etc. One of them called for a character that was not so bright. The guy playing the role immediately put on an Irish accent 😉 Another guy slept through the whole induction… Going to be an interesting 5 weeks!
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The Irish = a bit dense. Weird association…! Welsh accent would have been better, lololol.
Do they know you’ve got a blog? They better be careful…
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He IS Welsh!! They don’t know tee hee, and I’m not saying anything 😉
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Haaaaah!!! I knew it!!!!!!! Oooooh, the sheep jokes….
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Ah yes, prepositions. It took me literally MONTHS to remember that it’s “warten auf” not “warten für”. And don’t even get me started on those ones that can be either dative of accusative depending on the sentence. Aargh!!
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I know… people keep asking me to explain these things to them – and I can’t! I don’t even know how to explain to them how they can tell which case a sentence happens to be in. I can do it, but only by thinking about it in a way that would only make sense to a native German speaker.
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It’s something to do with movement… so I’m told. Still can’t remember which way round it is though!
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The only movement my explanations seem to achieve is them banging their heads against the table… oh well 😉
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Haha. It goes something like this… say a book is just lying there on the table. There is no movement, so it’s… one of them. Dative I think???? But if you place the book on the table, there is movement (book moving towards the table), there is movement, so it’s the other one. And that’s the point where my brain explodes.
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OK, let’s try this out…
Das Buch liegt auf dem Tisch. Dative, fair and square.
Das Buch rutscht über den Tisch. Accusative. It works!!
You are a fucking genius.
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It’s very funny this preposition story. I think I got it in English just after years and only by talking or watching television. Any grammar rule studied in school was simply useless. What is funny too is the different verbs related to life events. In German you “receive” a baby, in most of the other western languages you just have a baby. I always wondered where the German receiving comes from, because it sounds sort of religious, as if it was sent by someone. And so on, there’re hundreds of examples.
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Yes, the verbs are a total conundrum! Spanish lacks the verb “to become” / “werden”, and there’s a choice of about eight that you have to use instead, and I’m only just now starting to get to grips with this. I guess Italian must be similar…
And of course you receive a baby. From the stork! Everybody knows this!!!!
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Oh yes, I had with a friend a whole conversation about this lack of “becoming” (volverse?). And also, very interesting: there isn’t in Italian an exact translation of “sharing”. You can say “condividere” but it’s already sort of literary and you would never say it to a child. It must have something to do with the innate reticence toward…sharing:-)
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That IS interesting! In Spanish it’s compartir, and in Portuguese dividir, so it’s not a Romance language issue.
Volverse is one of the verbs that can be used for “to become”, but it depends on the context. There’s also convertirse, hacerse, ponerse, etc.
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Ha… prepositions. Always fun. Not.
I don’t think it’s particularly fair that prepositions change from language to language. And sometimes even within the language. Am I looking at something or on something? Why is it that some Germans are in the Post Office, whilst others are apparently on it?
Although, the language (that I know of) that really takes prepositions to a whole new level is Gaelic (either one). Admittedly there are only about 17 of them, but they have this nasty habit of popping up in a sentence and taking the place of a verb. Because Gaelic doesn’t have a verb for “to have”. Instead it’s at me. Or on me. Or with me. Depending on how emphatic you want to be about your possession or ownership of the thing. Or feeling, for that matter.
Oh, and Gaelic prepositions conjugate. The verbs don’t, but the prepositions do. Gah! Why didn’t I bother paying attention to this language when I was small?
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Gaelic prepositions conjugate??? I won’t be touching that with a barge pole 😉 Thanks for commenting, I love everybody’s input!
> Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 10:27:54 +0000 > To: sbaroke@hotmail.com >
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Pingback: Prepositions are Evil! | Rachel's Ramblings
Doesn’t “dar con” mean “to find” not “to look for”? For example, “Ayer di con una moneda en la calle.”
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YES! Thank you! I shall fix that right now 🙂
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