Preposition Basics

Without a doubt, prepositions are the hardest part of a language to master. While they do not inflect thelmselves, they control for cases jsut like verbs. In addition, they are rarely logical, their usage often coming down more to intuition than hard rules.

As a result, they can be hard to decipher and master.

What Are Prepositions?

Prepositions are words that come before nouns, pronouns, or noun-phrases that operate to show a relationship, typically temporal or location between the elements of the sentence.

Tip: They are called "pre"positions because they "pre"cede nouns.

Example 1: I am at a concert.
Example 2: I am on the plane.
Example 3: I am in the car.
Example 4: I went to Iceland.
Example 5: I left after six weeks.
Ecample 6: I went to the bank before I ate.

A Lack Of Logic

While prepositions in our native languages may seem perfectly logical and reasonable to us, they are likely not very logical at all. This can cause lots of frustration when learning another language, so it is best to face this reality immediately.

Consider Examples 1-3 above. The preposition used in each sentence communicates the same idea--showing the location of I in relation to the noun after the preposition--but for some reason they are not interchangable. It would be extremely weird to say you were on a concert in English. Instead, you have to say that you are at a concert. The same holds for the other examples, too.

Why is this? Well, much like the assignment of grammatical gender, the usage of prepositions often comes more down to intuition and tradition rather than rules. There is no one singular explainable reason, for example, that English says on a plane and on a boat but in a car.