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I don't understand why people say "I grew up on a farm" why not at or in please explain is it one of the oddities of english like every other languages have?

GPY · Accepted Answer

Liton DasI don't understand why people say "I grew up on a farm". Why not "at" or "in"? Please explain. Is it one of the oddities of English like all other languages have?

Preposition usage in English is often idiomatic. This means that the use of prepositions often does not follow simple, fixed rules. Instead, you have to learn individual patterns and collocations that native speakers naturally use. You have to learn that people grow up on a farm, yet grow up in an orphanage, for example. There is no rules-based way to predict this.

As I mentioned in your other thread, you persistently write run-on sentences. I encourage you to make an effort to try to address this problem, as it greatly affects the quality of your writing. In your own language, do you not have a concept of organising written statements into sentences that have some kind of visible separation in writing? In English writing, at least, you cannot just keep adding one idea after another in a kind of continuous stream of consciousness. You need to organise your ideas into sentences and use the correct punctuation.

CalifJim · Answer

Liton Daswhy people say "I grew up on a farm"

It's the same reason that people say anything. It's because that's the way everybody says it. There is usually no logic involved. Without logic there is nothing to explain. One thing you can do is memorize phrases the same way that you memorize words. You might think of each of the following items as a single item of your vocabulary.

on a farm, on a team, on a bed, on a shelf, on a rack, on a roll, on a road, on a bridge, on a hunch, on a TV show, on a boat, on a plane, on a weekday, on a trip, on a tour, on a menu, on a map, on a daily basis, on a slice of bread, on a military base, on a hill, on a poster, on an island, on a baking sheet, on a campus, on a budget, on a tray, ...

CJ

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