-Steven Taylor

I’ve always wondered, and maybe someone has an idea, why we say that we get “in the car,” but we get “on the bus.” It seems as though we use the preposition “in” with respect to private vehicles (cars, vans, trucks, even boats), but we use “on” for larger public transportation (planes, trains, buses). You would think that “in” should be more appropriate for any type of vehicle that you get “inside” of. I really don’t think I’d like it much “on” the plane, which literally would imply being on top of the plane.

Thanks for making me think.

–Jim Mitchell

The other use of “zu” in the sense of a spatial direction (zu dem Metzger/zum Metzger) seems related. In the uneducated language of some areas it is replaced with “nach” which is normally reserved for places (nach Berlin) as opposed to “zu” which relates to persons (zur Mutter) or other entities (zur Schule). This is where a joke comes from, which the Turkish person speaks better or more proper German in than the German person.

Ein Typ fährt durch Kreuzberg, hält an der Ecke an und fragt einen Türken:

“Wo geht’s hier nach Aldi”

Der Türke verbessert ihn:

“Zu Aldi”

Der Typ antwortet:

“Was, so spät schon?”

It needs to be a Turkish (thus Kreuzberg in Berlin) to make “zu Aldi” a common-sense clause indicating that the shop is closed which unveils the third meaning of the word “zu”.

A good reporter uses many prepositions.

It also made me think about verbs that are tied to prepositions or have a preposition implied in their meaning. I once took a Russian course, mercifully almost forgotten, but I do remember learning that most of their verbs of motion came in pairs, different depending on whether “to” or “from” was implied. English doesn’t do much of this, and it’s often ignored, but verbs like “bring” and “take” sometimes sound odd when used with the unexpected preposition.

Thanks for featuring my song, “Under the Stairs,” on your podcast. Great podcast BTW.

Sonic Deviant

There is a deep and serious disconnect between our hosting company and iTunes. The hosting server doesn’t seem to want to serve the feed file to iTunes, and iTunes cannot deal with the strange redirection applied by our server.

I am doing several things to combat this problem–including looking for a new blog hosting service. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do anything about this until the last week of December, because it will require some heavy-duty reconfiguration, which in turn requires uninterrupted time that I don’t have now.

In the meantime, as I wrote on the forum, you could use Juice Receiver as a podcatching client. The feed works just fine with Juice.

I am unable to get this show (prepositions #81)! I am using iTunes and it just won’t let me download it. Any suggestions? I really want to listen to it!

Thanks,

Anna

I’m sure the cigarette ad to which I referred predates the earliest Sesame Street by at least ten years. Although Howard said the phrase referred to the smoke going through a filter, I am pretty sure it was an ad for Pall Mall, a non-filtered cigarette. I was only a child, but I recall an image of smoke traveling over, under, around and through the non-smoked tobacco in the cigarette, on its way into the lungs of the smoker.

Maybe another Baby Boomer can refresh my memory.

I’m an English professor in Phoenix and I enjoy your show a great deal!

I just wanted to let you know that the phrase “over, under, around and through,” may have been in a cigarette ad, but many of us 30-somethings will remember the phrase from Grover on Sesame Street. It would be fun if you could add a clip of his singing that song to this episode!

He graduates in two days from Virginia Commonwealth University with a major in English, so I guess his everyday use of the language is acceptable at least to the VCU English faculty!

Student A: “Excuse me, where’s the library at?”
Student B: “Here at Harvard, we never end a sentence with a preposition.”
Student A: “O.K. Excuse me, where’s the library at, asshole?”

The joke becomes even more elaborate if the book the boy is rejecting is called ‘The Big Book of Australian Facts’ - the punchline thus becomes:

“What did you bring that book that I don’t like to be read to out of about Down Under up for?”

Which makes eight prepositions - can anyone beat that?

Read Loudly!!

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby
English will be the official language of the European Union rather
than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that
English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a
5- year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”.

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this
will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up
konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the
troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words
like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are
possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have
always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the
languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords
kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl
riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi
tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted
in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.