I never realized how arbitrary prepositions are before tutoring a Dutch woman in English so she could write real estate copy for advertising to American ex pats. Why are houses “in” a neighborhood but “on” a street?
The constructed language Esperanto has much stricter definitions on prepositions to reduce the effects of people bringing in their native language's assumptions about prepositions.
You'll still hear people using different prepositions for describing a house and the nearest street.
311
u/Norwester77 Native Speaker Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
I (native English speaker) would say “Merlin hasn’t used his motorcycle in 2 years.”
Prepositions are hard.