En France, Au Canada, À New-York, Aux Seychelles, À Cuba.
Don’t try to find a logic, there literally is none and anyone who tells you otherwise is just retrofitting rules to chaotic data and will inevitably have a list of exceptions longer than a French politician’s criminal record. Half of it is literally just “what was grammatically fashionable at the time this toponym was discovered/imported/created”.
This does not excuse English’s abuse of prepositions though. Why do I get on the bus but in the car? Why, English?
I once heard a non-native English speaker tell me they remember “on” vs. “in” as “if you can walk around while on it (train, plane, bus) then it’s on, if you can’t (car) then it’s in.”
En France, Au Canada, À New-York, Aux Seychelles, À Cuba.
Don’t try to find a logic, there literally is none and anyone who tells you otherwise is just retrofitting rules to chaotic data and will inevitably have a list of exceptions longer than a French politician’s criminal record. Half of it is literally just “what was grammatically fashionable at the time this toponym was discovered/imported/created”.
This does not excuse English’s abuse of prepositions though. Why do I get on the bus but in the car? Why, English?
I once heard a non-native English speaker tell me they remember “on” vs. “in” as “if you can walk around while on it (train, plane, bus) then it’s on, if you can’t (car) then it’s in.”
I kind of liked that description.