Prepositions in English

Hi everyone,

Something difficult when learning a language is to use correct prepositions.

Prepositions sometimes look random or say without much good reason.

A problem is that at school, there're not many lessons around this.

French / English
- aller à Paris / to go to Paris (at which would be the translation of "à")
- venir à Paris / to come to Paris at
- venir de Paris / to come from Paris of
- arriver à Paris / to arrive at/in Paris
- travailler chez Areva / to work at Areva by
- travailler à Lille / to work in Lille at
- dire qqc à qqn / to say sth to so - to tell so about sth
- écouter qqc / to listen to sth
- regarder qqc / to look at sth
- fournir qqc à qqn / to provide so with sth (but more various)

Do you learn each one by heart?
Do you have some tips?

Thanks.

Hi everyone,

I remember a "rule" stating that homonyms are usually followed by the same preposition. However my problem is that I don't remmeber if it's valid in English or in German. Please could you help me (I guess it's in German for declensions)?

Hi everyone,

Prepositions are a nightmare, aren't they?

Is there a way to get rid of them?
In German, a verb is followed by a declension case with or without a preposition in front, eg warten auf etwas (dative).
There're possibilities to get rid of this using prefixes -er or -be -> erwarten etwas (accusative ie transitive)

Is there a possibility to avoid prepositions in English like:
- to wait for sth / to await sth
- to wake sb up (bad example as the verb is transitive) / to awake
Handy, no?
What do you know about this? Did you experience this kind of verbs?

Hi Gérard, everyone
I personnaly tend to learn everything by heart and I don't have any tip, i am sorry

Muriel,

Boring and difficult to learn everything by heart, no?
I suppose that after years of experience, we can feel prepositions and learn exceptions only, no?

Does my sentence about prefixes to get rid of prepositions ring a bell?

yes Gérard, it does ring a bell ! Unfortunately I can't find examples apart from "To wake up/ awake"

Muriel, everyone,

These examples in English are not frequent but in German, the be- prefix (tho' my example was with er- erwarten) might be rather usual, no?

What about what I wrote regarding "synonyms are followed by the same prepositions and declension cases), is it true?

I tried hard to think about what you mean but could not find anything (intelligent ) to say. perhaps in german the separable verbs and the verbs which are not.
"synonyms are followed by the same prepositions and declension cases" Are you sure ?

No I'm speaking about genuine prepositions not separable particles.
eg denken an+dative
eg warten auf+dative.

prefixes to get rid of prepositions like
dableiben (stay behind)
dalassen (leave there)

dabeibleiben (stay/stick with it)
dabeisitzen (sit in on)
is it what you mean ?

MurielB a écrit:For instance befinden (be located) meaning finden sich auf

This case is a separable particle one.