Monday 15 September 2008

Prepositioned!

Why is it so hard to explain prepositions in the English Language? My poor Turkish students (who have never heard of such a strange phenomena) really struggled...

"I have confidence about his ability?"
(No, that would be ...in his ability.)

"It wasn't an accident. He did it for purpose?"
(No, unfortunately ...on purpose.)

"Bill's absolutely terrified from spiders?"
(No, he's terrified of them).

etc etc

In better news. 5 bars of Dairy Milk for £1.00 in Messrs Frank Winfield Woolworth. Lovely stuff!

3 comments:

E. C. Rhodes said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
E. C. Rhodes said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
E. C. Rhodes said...

As one pedant to another, let me note the following:
- phenomenon (singular)
- phenomena (plural)

I believe that Turkish uses grammatical case suffixes and postpositions, which may help (at least in part) to explain part of the problem with using prepositions in English.