Prepositions are hard

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In learning Italian, getting the prepositions right has been a maddening effort for me. I really think there is no way to get this through rules: you just keep at it until 'a' or 'in' or 'per' or 'di' etc. seems natural to you in the right spot.

But even among speakers of English across the globe the question of what preposition to use is not easy, as shown by this group of linguists fighting over whether they were dining 'on the weekend' or 'at the weekend.' And for Americans 'X is different than Y,' while to Brits, 'X is different to Y.'

Comments

  1. Bob Murphy11:43 PM

    Yikes! I have always thought it was supposed to be "different from."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gcallah11:46 PM

      You see: even between NY and CT, prepositions are different!

      Delete
  2. James Caton11:51 PM

    I go to sleep at night with an MLA manual on my nightstand in order to avoid these problems.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Samson Corwell8:23 PM

    There's also "X is different from Y.".

    ReplyDelete

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