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"Prepositions are tricky"

Language Log 2025-10-07

…as AntC said in a comment on yesterday's "Different from/than/to?" post.

For example, different was borrowed from French différent. But the French use the preposition de with that adjective, e.g. "Pourquoi les Québécois ont-ils un accent différent de celui des Français?". And de is mostly translated as "of", but no English speaker would ever say "X is different of Y".

Or so I thought — but COCA has 72 hits for "different of". Most of them are from contexts like "different of course", but others seem genuine, like this one:

And in another, filmed by Mecklem in 1997, Roman shares an appreciation for the "slowness" of painting, in both the creation and appreciation of it. "You can look at it hundreds of times over the years and you can eventually eke out something, some meaning out of it," he said. "That type of attitude is so different of the mega-visual culture that we have of just quick cuts… It would be good to bring back the activity of painting, of observing painting, and appreciating painting."

French de can also be English "from" ("Il arrive de Paris" = "He's coming from Paris"), or "for" ("L'élève a sauté de joie" = "The student jumped for joy"), or other things.

And French à?

English translations include

  • "to" ("Allons à Paris" = "Let's go to Paris"),
  • "in" ("Nous vivons à Philadelphie" = "We live in Philadelphia"),
  • "on" ("à la carte" = "on the menu")
  • "by" ("louer à l'année" = "rent by the year") ("goutte à goutte" = "drop by drop")
  • "with" ("La poésie grecque commence à Homère" = "Greek poetry begins with Homer") ("se battre à l'épée" = "fight with swords")

And also often nothing, including compounding:

  • "au secours!" = "help!" (not "*to the help!")
  • "sauce à pizza" = "pizza sauce"
  • "vache à lait" = "milk cow"

Moving across languages and dialects, one of the hardest things is learning where to use what prepositions and cases and structures. Sometimes this seems to be because there are subtle differences in meaning, but it's also sometimes because morphosyntax is only quasi-regular.