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Course: Grammar > Unit 5
Lesson 1: Introduction to prepositionsPrepositions of space
Some prepositions help describe relationships between objects and their locations in space. David explains how!
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- Is there any difference between to and towards?(12 votes)
- To indicates the possibility of arrival, or even the accomplishment of arrival.
Towards indicates only the direction of travel.(43 votes)
- Could i say:" I will meet you at your hotel at 2am?"
Thank you!(9 votes) - but how do you find it its hard bruh(4 votes)
- I'm an old guy (70), but I still remember what a kid in my grade 5 class said about prepositions 60 years ago. This was about prepositions of space (not prepositions of time). He said that a preposition was the word that told you where a mouse was on a hill. So, "under" the hill, "beside" the hill, "in" the hill, "on" the hill, all of these were prepositions. I know this is not a perfect rule, but it has helped me for six decades, and I hope it helps you.(11 votes)
- A cheeseburger is a meat patty with a slice of cheese and buns (other top optional)(9 votes)
- how do you you draw so well on the computer? I suck at it.(8 votes)
- Mr. Khan has been drawing like that scence two-thousand-six. When he started he was not so good at it.
All that you need is a LOT OF PRACTICE!(1 vote)
- how is this man so good at drawing with a mouse(7 votes)
- This is khan academy not MHA(5 votes)
- Lol Priyanshu, I'm watching these vids to pass by time so I don't have to do work BUT energy points are a bonus. Lol(6 votes)
- how smart is alber einstein(3 votes)
- Albert Einstein's IQ is around 160 so very smart.(4 votes)
- Is under the bus a space preposition(3 votes)
- "under" is a space preposition.
"under the bus" is a prepositional phrase that functions as a space preposition.(3 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] Hello grammarians! So we had said previously
that prepositions express relationships between two ideas. And we can do that either in time or in space or in other ways. But today I wanna talk about prepositions in space. Because this is, again, one of the things that prepositions do, is they can set up
relationships between objects and their locations. So I could say, the triangle is over the square, or on top of the square. I could say, the circle is inside the square. Over, inside. What I would like to do is
review some of the major ones, and talk about what their uses are. So when we use the word at in a sentence, and here I'm talking about,
something we should note, is that some of these prepositions can be used in multiple ways. So at has a space connotation, but it also can have a time connotation. But I don't want you to really
worry about that right now, I think it makes the most sense to just think of their uses as separate, and just think of them separately. So when we talk about
at, at means a point. It's talking about a point. So we could say something like, we stood at the entrance to a cave. But you can also have this
connotation of direction. As in, the creature
launched itself at Amina. The word by when we're talking
about space means near. As in, the house by the old
mill is totally haunted. Man all these sentences
are like really spooky, ooooh, I don't know what I was thinking. The preposition from has this
connotation of coming from somewhere else to here. As in, we came from Mars. In denotes an enclosed area, so you could say something like there's a bunny in the box. Off denotes away from, she hopped off the rock. On, which usually notes
being on a surface, as opposed to in which is an
enclosed area like I said. So we could say, there's a
goblin on the front steps. The goblin is on the steps. The bunny is in the box. Do you see the difference? Out is another direction
word. Away from something. And off and on and in
and out mean the opposite of each other. So away from, out means
away from an enclosed area, and off means away from a surface. So if you can imagine, there's
someone who's on the rock, and then they hop off the rock. There's a goblin on the front steps, the goblin leaves the front
steps he's off the front steps. There's a bunny in the box, if the bunny leaves the box
it will go out of the box. And there's plenty of other prepositions but let's talk about to,
which when you're talking about to in the physical sense it has this connotation of direction. So you could say, I'm going to Mozambique. These are some of but certainly not all of the spacial prepositions of English. Now we're lucky because
prepositions are a closed group in English, a closed group. We don't add many of them to the language the way that we add nouns and adverbs and verbs and adjectives. There are a lot of them
and you have to memorize all of them and their
various obnoxious nuances, but there isn't a limitless
number of prepositions. There's maybe 100 plus,
and of those maybe 50 are quite useful, and of those, maybe 20 to 25 are super useful. And it's the super
useful, most common ones that are in the exercises,
so give those a go, you can learn anything. David out.