[ad name=”Adsense”]
Humanity shares three common fears… First, we all worry that there are monsters in particular places, whether this is under a bed, in a closet, or in the crisper of the refrigerator. Secondly, we all dread seeing another one of those stink bugs in our kitchen (the 1,347th sign that the apocalypse is upon us). Finally, we inevitably have a fear of prepositions.
Sure, for the first years of our life we barely notice these demonic devices. We fling a few at our parents, we assault our friends constantly with them, we are even bold enough to weave them into speech in business and formal situations. It is only when we venture outside of our native language that we realize both the power and peril present in the preposition.
Why should you fear the preposition? It is true that many prepositions give the illusion of actually having a concrete meaning. Words such as beside, over, and toward offer the possibility of producing a very understandable abstract image in one’s mind. But many prepositions are much more ambiguous in their meaning. In English we can think “about someone” or think “of someone” but does this have any relation to seeing your friends “running about the town” or getting a piece “of cake.” This gets messier in foreign languages. It takes a lot of flexibility to think “na someone” in Croatian when translating mislim na tebe as well as going to a koncert na gradu. In short, if you are venturing into another language, you will be memorizing a lot of prepositional phrases.
But it gets worse!!!! Surely you already dread cases (accusative, genitive, etc.) if you are delving into a language where these are a concern. Prepositions, because they are the Tower of Babel incarnate, often demand that whatever follows them be stated in one of these grammatical cases. Why? Because they can! No other reason. So remember that when you are going “through” something in German, that something better be in the accusative case.
In short….. When learning a foreign language, memorize many prepositional phrases as well as grammatical cases associated with each preposition or you will sound a bit more stupid than you should!
[ad name=”Adsense”]