It isn't just English. German has similar struggles, with the additional fun that you have remember what case goes with which prepositions.

Also note the differences within the same language but across different geographic regions. Some places in the US, I wait in line. Other places, I wait on line.

You also ride in a car but on a bus.

Further to Witness's observation, I note the distinction between "call me at 555-1212" -- in my experience, the more common American locution -- and "call me on 555-1212." I'd never encountered the latter until I moved to Washington, DC, so I gather it's largely limited to the Middle Atlantic as far as American usage goes.

Also: is a relevant court opinion "on point" or "in point"?

I still feel a bit funny saying "na pochta" and "na zavod" in Russian, feeling as if I mean the roof. Russians complain abou the English but think these cases are just obvious, at least in my experience.

Not only that, but the usage changes over time. All the youngsters I work with and even my own grown children say, "it happened on accident." The correct usage is, of course by accident.

This was a mystery to me until I caught myself one day saying, "I did it on purpose."

The kids are just standardizing on one preposition in the same context. Could be a simpler way to go.

The beauty of English is that it is highly fault-tolerant. People who speak it as a second language and uneducated native speakers mangle their sentences all the time and are still understood.

These features are pretty minor for someone learning the language, and as Clayton Cramer noted, other languages have similar oddities. We don't have grammatical gender, we don't have case except for prepositions (and Americans mostly get case wrong anyway), we don't have adjective endings, and most of our plurals are fairly regular. I've been told by Spanish-speakers who learned English as adults that it was a snap. The only thing that strikes me as tough for a new learner is spelling. Maybe vocabulary, as we seem to have both Germanic and Latin-based words for most things.

Mark Twain once said something to the effect that an intelligent person could learn English in a month, French in a year, and German only after a very long time.

Anyway, it's a lot better than having to learn Irish: instead of changing the endings of words, Irish changes the beginnings, making it almost impossible to use a dictionary. Fortunately, no one really has to learn Irish.

You learn langauge not by assembling words into phrases but by disassembling cliches and idioms and using parts of them elsewhere. The preposition comes from something you already learned. Unless, of course, you're a foreigner learning English word by word.

There is a method to the madness for some of these. Something is "in" a magazine because you have to open it up. "On" a magazine would be something written on the cover. A web site is on a flat screen, so there is not literal opening up of something to find the article inside. There is a difference beweeen using a writing implement ("in" pencil/pen/marker/crayon) and a machine ("on"/"with" the typewriter/computer), but I don't exactly know why the particular words are used. And I have no idea why the car/bus distinction exists; I would guess the bus version comes from riding "on" the train, but there is no clear reason for that.

I have actually never heard the "waiting on line," "in point," or "different to" examples cited. Are these regional or just poor English?

RV,
"Waiting on line" is standard usage in the New York City area; it struck me as odd when I first moved here but is quite common. I haven't heard of the others.

(If anyone would care to respond to my comment above, I really could use some advice on that one...)

RV says, I have actually never heard the "waiting on line," "in point," or "different to" examples cited. Are these regional or just poor English?

"Different to" is standard in Irish English.

"In point" appears most often in the fixed phrase "case in point," which produces 1.75MM Google hits. If this be poor English, it is poor English put to use in untold numbers of judicial opinions.

Articles are just as much trouble, even in the same language. So we say 'mother is in the hospital', but in England they say 'mother is in hospital' omitting 'THE'.

Why?

"I have actually never heard the "waiting on line," "in point," or "different to" examples cited. Are these regional or just poor English?"

"Different to" is primarily BrE. Per the Bartleby article here, all are standard English.

Stats:

"Different from" - 150M Google Hits (GHits)
"Different than" - 19.3M GHits
"Different to" - 1.7M GHits

"Standing on line" is a NE US idiom (it may be more localized than that).

Stats:

"Standing in line" - 1250K GHits
"Standing on line" - 30.6K GHits

I don't recognize that usage of "in point" and can't quickly come up with a decent search.

OT: "We English speakers try accurately to represent reality."

Do you really "try accurately"?

"... try to accurately represent..." is idiomatic, clear, and perfectly grammatical.

(Sorry, pet peeve.)

"Hate to be pedantic, but you might want to say "na pocht'e" and "na zavod'e," since Russian requires the nouns to be inflected based on the attached preposition."

Yes, that's the sort of thing my wife keeps telling me too. And that my Russian teachers kept trying to tell me. Sigh. (And really, is it true that you hate to be pedantic? I must admit I'm a bit skeptical about _that_.)

Federal Dog said:

Every language I speak is the same way. Prepositions are just a bitch.

Having at least some familiarity, if not fluency in English, German, Spanish, Latin, French, Italian, and Russian, I am struck by the artificiality of prepositions. I do not know of any preposition that can be directly translated into another language all the time. The languages just slice the relationship pie into different pieces. We take the Latin "in" and divide it into "on" and "in." The French feel the need to use an entirely new word, "sur." But is "sur" (L. super, but they don't always mean the same thing) on, over, above, or the prepositional phrase on top of? The Spanish are happy most of the time with "in" for both on and in but occasionally feel the need for "sobre."

A high school English teacher of mine once said that a preposition is anything an airplane can do to a cloud. Different languages have different attitudes toward how the plane does this. And don't even get me into the highly inflected languages like Russian and Latin where the preposition is omitted and the relationship of the airplane to the cloud ins inherent in the ending of the noun/ pronoun. English still has a remnant of this in 's and s'.

Yup, prepositions are a bitch. I seem to remember one definition of them is that they are a word that indicates some manner of relationship between other words, which is about as general as it gets.

Once read something to the effect that English may have been simplified because it evolved out of a manner of pidgin English that had to be used as common tongue between widely varying language groups -- Anglo-Saxon, basically Germanic languages, Danish in the north, and later Norman French.

I think "case in point" and a case being "on point" are just substantively different things, right? A case in point is an example, while an on-point case is one that directly speaks to the facts of your own case.

I've also always been especially aurally grated upon, for some reason, by the Canadian/British "in hospital" or "at university," although, as pointed out above, we say "in college" or "in prison." I guess I just tend to suspect anyone using Anglicized phrased of being a pretentious American rather than an actual foreigner (see, e.g., the trend, now somewhat in decline, of signing emails with "Cheers," as if the writer was about to pop down to the pub with his mates).

Thanks for trying to help me, David, but I did mean "on" (or in, or whatever we want to say in translation). Motion towards is a bitch in Russian, too, though. That and always forgetting to distinguish properly whether I'm going by transportation or by foot are just some of the many things that make my Russian friends laugh (or cry) when I talk with them.

English-speakers say "allergic to" but German-speakers say "allergic against." I think that the German convention makes more sense.

Christopher M (mail):
Perhaps an even trickier use of prepositions is in "phrasal verbs," like "to blow up," "to come down with," etc.

German has its own trick in this regard. Its verbs often contain the preposition as part of the infinitive and it separates when you use the verb. Wikipedia mentions mitgehen, "to go with." Gehen Sie mit Romney?

In "to clean something", "something" is the thing you remove the dirt of. In "to clean something up", "something" is the dirt.

That's part of it, sure, but you can "clean up a room" as well as "clean up the dirt in the room." And compare "I need to clean my car" vs. "I need to clean up my car." To me, the former more likely refers to removing dirt, smudges, grime, etc. (that is, washing the car), while the latter more likely refers to removing and/or organizing stuff (that is, getting the trash out of the car, putting the coins into the coin holders, etc.).

So "clean" differs from "clean up" on at least two axes, one syntactic (both verbs can take as an object the thing/place that ends up clean, but "clean up" can also take as an object the source of the uncleanliness) and one semantic ("clean" tends to refer to removing small-scale stuff like dirt, while "clean up" tends to refer to putting something into an organized state). I bet there are other shades of meaning/usage as well.

It is weird say something was written on a typewriter at all; however, much that phrase may be used it is clearly a prepositional mistake.

No, it isn't. The preposition "on," among its many other functions, can indicate the device or system one uses as a medium to do something. "I was talking on the telephone," "I added up the numbers on my calculator," "He wrote the book on his computer."

You can't just postulate some abstract meaning of "on" and then declare illegitimate all usages that don't conform to your system. If you want to understand language, you have to start with the data about how words are actually used (with allowances for different registers, dialects, variants, etc.) and then extrapolate rules or patterns from the data. If you want to invent a new, ultra-formal language with strict abstract rules for preposition usage, that's fine, but you can't just pretend that English is such a language.

Do you think we should be saying "I spoke to him yesterday with the telephone"? I doubt it.

Russian native speakers should kindly remember the number of Russian prepositions that take two or three (or four!) cases and not be surprised when English -- which has first-language users native to five continents (and had over 100 years of divergent development on all five before telephones came along) has oddities like this. To say nothing of "colour" and "jumper" and how the "first" floor has a ten to fifteen foot variation in elevation when you cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Having said that (because really, guys. Four cases!) nearly all of the differences in question make sense when you think about it -- same goes for my lovely dual list of things-that-take-na and things-that-take-v items, which my last Russian instructor actually managed to justify with only ten minutes of lecture. And, at least you don't have to worry about specialized endings on top of remembering which preposition is standard for a given usage!

(Says the girl who still has the page of notes with the complicated illustration to explain the progression of a person into and around and out of their home, with separate houses for when they don't intend to come back versus when they do. All separate prepositions! Argh!)

Sarah:
Having said that (because really, guys. Four cases!) nearly all of the differences in question make sense when you think about it -- same goes for my lovely dual list of things-that-take-na and things-that-take-v items, which my last Russian instructor actually managed to justify with only ten minutes of lecture. And, at least you don't have to worry about specialized endings on top of remembering which preposition is standard for a given usage!

That instructor was clearly fudging, probably to impress you. There are things about those Russian prepositions that don't fit into a neat schema, unless you get to a Talmudic level of interpretation, in which case the value of this schema is kind of low. And I don't even count prepositions for geographic entities. This reminds me of a story about a German who claimed that his language was so logical that the meaning of composite words could always be derived from their components, in particular for prepositions attached to verbs (incidentally, not true at all).
Overall though, I would not complain of the complexity of English too much, certainly compared to many other languages. Of the languages I am familiar with, only Scandinavian ones approach English in simplicity (Icelandic and Faroese excluded). Like in any language, a lot is done simply by drill, practice, drill, practice, and so on, including the use of prepositions.

Sanskrit is a model of rationality and linguistic beauty in comparison with English. Indeed, it's interesting that linguistics finds it origins among the Grammarians (Panini, Katyayana, and Patanjali, for instance, the latter not to be confused with the author of the Yogasutras) of India and that grammar (vyakarana) was from the earliest times in India a distinct science. As it says in the Wikipedia entry on Panini: "Panini, and the later Indian linguist Bhartrihari, had a significant influence on many of the foundational ideas proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure, professor of Sanskrit, who is widely considered the father of modern structural linguistics. Noam Chomsky has always acknowledged his debt to Panini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar. In Optimality Theory, the hypothesis about the relation between specific and general constraints is known as "Panini's Theorem on Constraint Ranking". Paninian grammars have also been devised for non-Sanskrit languages. His work was the forerunner to modern formal language theory (mathematical linguistics) and formal grammar, and a precursor to computing. Panini's use of metarules, transformations, and recursion together make his grammar as rigorous as a modern Turing machine. The Backus-Naur form (Panini-Backus form) or BNF grammars used to describe modern programming languages have significant similarities to Panini grammar rules."

Regarding "in line" versus "on line" -- where an astronomer (or a normal person, for that matter ;-) would say "in orbit," someone who works for NASA would say "on orbit." Go figure.

MikeG in Corvalis,
I would shudder if a professional astronomer used in orbit vs on orbit. On orbit is the proper usage because 'orbit' is a specific path involving speed, trajectory, and acceleration vector.

Put it this way: in 'in line', line refers to the people around you. in 'on ine', line refers to a line (usually painted) on the ground that you are standing on. Rule of thumb with in vs on, you use on if the object of the preposition is something you physically surmount. (path, line, road, orbit). You use in if the object of the preposition surround you. (line as queue, water, earth (as burial), etc). Context and usage are preeminent in prepositions. However, most people don't particulary care to speak properly anyway, so local mis-usages spread into the general vernacular and the true meanings change over time.

FYI, growing up in the northeast we used in line to queue for things like tickets, but on line in school because when we queued for assemblies we had painted lines on the floor to stand on.

R/
Pol

How many people here log IN to their computers, and how many log ON? Personally I'd log on, but I'm in a definite minority: "log in" has 658m global Google hits, "log on" only 33.7m, a ratio of 19.5 to one. Restricted to UK searches only, the ratio of "log in" to "log on" is 20.9 to one, so even in my native Rightpondia I'm vastly outnumbered ...

As a professional astronomer at NASA, I can say that we use "in orbit" frequently. But Pol is right that "on orbit" has a feeling of a specific orbit for a specific spacecraft. Also, I get the impression that the engineers and techs who are more concerned with getting spacecraft to space than the use of them once there use "on orbit" more frequently. "On station", I believe is a naval term for being at an assigned position.

It still feels more natural to me to say "at the Center", referring to the NASA center where I work, but all of the guys who have been here a long time say "on Center".

"On campus" contrasts with "in the field", funny since campus means field.

Someone is "in college" (in America) but "at the college/university", "at university" (in England) staying "in a college". A person could be "on the faculty", but "in the student body",

Ask a National Forest Ranger, and he'll say that he works 'on' the [X] National Forest. Always seemed to me that he must be skimming along the tops of the trees.

Don't Americans say "I live on Elm Street" while Brits say "I live in Elm Street"?

Also, does one live on or in an island? I used to live in an American territory called Guam, and my recollection was that most folks there said "I live in Guam" (as I would now say "I live in California") -- not "I live on Guam," although they were of course ON the island.

What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read
to out of up for?

Why did you bring up that book out of which I did not want to be read to?

Is that any better?

Here's an interesting pair:

1. John was hit with a meteorite.

2. John was hit by a meteorite.

In #1, John must have been in a museum somewhere when someone got a meteorite out of a display case and hit him with it. In #2, John is walking outside, and a meteorite comes out of the sky.

Case grammar--the idea that prepositions are (among other things) the case markers in English--makes sense out of a system that otherwise seems bizzare and random (which language is NOT).

#2 is a passive sentence: A meteorite hit John--->John was hit by a meteorite. "By" is the case marker for [AGENT].

#1 is also passive: Someone hit John with a meteorite--->
John was hit with a meteorite by someone--->John was hit with a meteorite.

In #1, the [AGENT] is deleted, and "with" is the [INSTRUMENT] case marker (as in "John broke the window with a hammer.")

Some prepositions can do double duty. "With" for example, also marks the [ASSOCIATE]case: John went to the movies with his brother.

Complicated? Sure. Random? Nope.

I have to agree with Laura S. that it sounds odd to "write on a typewriter," but for a different reason. "Write" to me has always implied doing something by hand — handwritten. There would be no confusion if I were to ask "Did he write the letter or type it?" I have the same reaction, though not quite as largely, when I hear of someone who "penned" a novel, even though it was created on a computer. There was no pen involved.

Yes, I know that "writer" is inherent in the word "typewriter," but things get misnamed all the time. Look at the English horn, which is neither!

At any rate, I tried to write this note on the computer, but my Sharpie ran out of ink. So I typed it instead.

How many people here log IN to their computers, and how many log ON?

I thought about this for a good ten minutes.

I tend to use log ON when I'm thinking in a hardware/operating system perspective. I log ONto the desktop, the network, "Windows."

I tend to use log IN when I'm thinking of the application perspective. I log into my email account, my bank account, the bidding program, World of Warcraft (but ON to the specific server).

It appears that when I think of the connection as to a real-world physical construct, I use ON, and when I think of it as software, I use IN. I log into to my online banking account but I log onto a website (because the website is proxy for a physical machine).

I believe I'm fairly consistent in the usage except with the OS level. I think that's because Windows is no longer a layer distinct from the computer in the vast majority of circumstances. 15 years ago, I might log on to the computer and then log in to Windows the application. Now unless I force it to behave otherwise, there's no getting on the computer unless the OS is up and running.

"Why do people want to get on an airplane? I want to get in!"

"Why do people want to get on an airplane? I want to get in!"

<carlin>Let Evel Knievel get on the plane!</carlin>

(Wow, illegal tag detection. Been a while since I had to use my HTML chops to get around that.)

Staten Island is a borough, which you can certainly be in.

"I'm on ur base killin' ur doodz" doesn't have the same panache.

I think a linguist should research this prepositional business, first writing his research notes down in a notebook and then writing them up in an article....

Pol Mordreth wrote:

"I would shudder if a professional astronomer used in orbit vs on orbit."

I think you need to talk to more professional astronomers. The ones who don't talk about spacecraft all seem to use "in orbit" exclusively. An astronomer would never say, "The planet upsilon Andromedae b is on orbit around an F8 V star."

Perhaps I didn't make my intent clear: I didn't mean to imply that "on orbit" was always incorrect, only that certain NASA types used it when "in orbit" would be the logical choice. I can see using "on orbit" as a synonym for "on trajectory," or "on track," or "having achieved orbit with specific intended elements," or -- as jayc pointed out -- in an analog to "on station."

But some (mainly in the NASA manned spaceflight community) seem to fetishize the use of "on orbit," employing it for the general case of being in an orbit when the orbital elements are irrelevant to the discussion -- as in situations analogous to "in flight." For example, compare "in-flight refueling of the SR-71" to "on-orbit fueling of the Centaur stage," or "in-flight repair of the beverage cart" to "on-orbit repair of the CRM-114 unit" ... my inclination would be to use "in-orbit" instead. And I would say "the satellite is nevertheless in orbit" if it had achieved an orbit but not necessarily the desired one. I'd almost always say "the satellite is now in orbit" if it had achieved the intended orbit, too.

As for "on Center"? That one makes me shudder.

eck:

mhenner notes we say 'mother is in the hospital', but in England they say 'mother is in hospital' omitting 'THE'. Why?

In America we say "he's in college." Is that any less peculiar?

"The college" is a place, "in college" is a condition. A student is still "in college" while working a summer job 1,000 miles away, but a professor is not "in college" even though he is physically present in the college. I don't know, but it seems reasonable that the British idiom "in hospital" similarly reflects the difference between the status of a hospitalized patient, and all the staff, visitors, and outpatients who are present in the hospital. These idioms don't derive from the meanings of "in" and "the" that I can see, but are just conventions that have become recognized by most speakers of American and English English, respectively.

An example in another language, according to a German-speaker I once knew: Ich bin Berliner (without an article) means "I am a resident of Berlin." Ich bin ein Berliner means, "I am a jelly donut." American English has not had to make that distinction because when we form food names from city names, we keep the basic noun for the food and turn the city name into an adjective ("Philly cheesesteak", "Buffalo wings", "Boston baked beans").

SeaDrive wrote:

Partitives drove me crazy in French class. They are random in English too:

Do you want coffee?
Do you want some coffee?
Do you want a coffee?
Do you want a cup of coffee?

Replace with water, milk, soda, beer, etc. Or steak and french fries.

I had a college roommate, born in Los Angeles to American-born parents, who drove me crazy by using partitives in his own random manner. For example, he once asked me, "When you go to Safeway, could you pick me up a bread?" Aaauugghh!

"In Elm Street" is obsolete, but it certainly was correct in the 19th century.

Finnish has two forms of location in a city, like in English "in Helsinki" or "to Stockholm" or "from London".
One form is using internal location, i.e. "Helsingissä" meaning "in Helsinki". Another form is using external location, i.e. "Tampereella" literally meaning "on/at Tampere". Note the distinction between "ssa/ssä" and "lla/llä".
The thing is, some city names are always used with the internal form, and some city names are always used with the external form, and no one in Finland has managed to come up with a rule defining which is which. These simply have to be learned in memory.