An investigation of the three English Prepositions (In, On, At) and their Meanings in Arabic

Résumé

Prepositions are an essential part of any language as they help connect different elements in a sentence and determine their relationship with each other. The English language has many prepositions, such as “in, on” and “at”, which are used frequently in everyday communication. However, when it comes to translating prepositions into another language, it can be a bit tricky as different languages may have different prepositions for the same context. This paper aimes at exploring the different translations of the three prepositions “in, on” and “at” into Arabic, and their direct meaning. Idiomatic meaning of these prepositions were excluded from this study. Examples were provided in order to help illustrate the usage and context of these prepositions. The smaple of the study was a collection of English sentences including the three prepositions “in, on, and at”. All the sentences were translated into Arabic to get the different Arabic meaning for each preposition. The findings revealed that the preposition “in” had three different Arabic meanings, the preposition “on” had five different Arabic meanings, and the preposition “at” had three different Arabic meanings. Therefore, these prepositions could be misleading when translated into Arabic. The study has concluded with some recommendations to the teachers of English when teaching prepositions.