• Zagorath@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Probably made by a non-native English speaker. Prepositions are so unique to each language and oftentimes seemingly randomly chosen (is that à, de, sur, or no preposition at all, French?). If you roughly know a one-to-one translation of the prepositions from your language into English, you can often get it wrong just like this.

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        En France, Au Canada, À New-York, Aux Seychelles, À Cuba.

        Don’t try to find a logic, there literally is none and anyone who tells you otherwise is just retrofitting rules to chaotic data and will inevitably have a list of exceptions longer than a French politician’s criminal record. Half of it is literally just “what was grammatically fashionable at the time this toponym was discovered/imported/created”.

        This does not excuse English’s abuse of prepositions though. Why do I get on the bus but in the car? Why, English?

        • slouching_employer@lemmy.one
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          I once heard a non-native English speaker tell me they remember “on” vs. “in” as “if you can walk around while on it (train, plane, bus) then it’s on, if you can’t (car) then it’s in.”

          I kind of liked that description.

  • DrPop@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    My wife slices straight through the wax paper every time. I call her a monster, she claims it saves time.