- [Voiceover] Hey grammarians, I want to talk about prepositions but before I do I'm going to
draw you a little hamster. Is it a hamster? Is it a tiny bear? Who knows? We're just going to call it a hamster, a little rodent type creature. Now I'm going to use
this critter to establish what prepositions are and what they do because in addition to
there being a hamster there's also going to be this box. So what prepositions do is they establish
relationships between stuff in place and time so it can show us where things are, when things
are, and how things are. Let me demonstrate. So, okay, using just
this hamster and this box we can move this box around and talk about how the hamster
relates to the box, right. So right now the box is under the hamster, let's write that down. Right, the box is under the hamster, that word under is a preposition because it's establishing
this relationship of where. It's connecting the box to the hamster. The box is under the hamster. But if I move it up like so, now we can say the box
is over the hamster. But let's get rid of the
box and let's imagine that our hamster is
having a midlife crisis. And our hamster decides
it's going to go out and it's going to splurge
on a fabulous, new hat, just an enormous top hat, a
little band in the center, just a big, old, silly, Abe Lincoln style, stove pipe, top hat. Now, another use for
prepositions is we can talk about when things are in relation to each other. So I could say, "Before
the hamster got the hat "and after the hamster got the hat." Right, and these words after and before express relationships in time. But another interesting thing
that prepositions can do is they can also help
express how something is or how it's, what it's
for, what its use is. So we could say that
this hat is for parties or is for wearing at parties. Oh, and at, also, is a preposition. This hat is for wearing at parties. So this is the how and
this part is the where. So what's the purpose of the hat? Well, we established
that with the word for, the hat is for wearing. The where is it supposed
to be worn, at parties, that's the where. We can also use a word like of to express the how relationship and
that's just sort of to say what belongs to whom. So we could say, "That is
the hat of the hamster." That is the hat of the hamster. So that's what prepositions are in the most basic sense they can help you figure out
what the relationship is between two things in time and space or how one thing relates to another. So you can figure out when, where, and how using prepositions. You can learn anything, David out.