AT vs ON Understand English Grammar The Native Way - Difference Between AT, ON and IN

Hi there. I'm Drew Badger, the founder of EnglishAnyone.com and the world's number one

English Fluency Guide. In this video, I'd like to talk about some very simple prepositions

and help you understand them like a native, so you can use them fluently and confidently.

Well, this whole lesson began when I was actually reading a book to my daughter. It was talking

about a witch who had a wart on her nose. So, let me just draw a quick little witch

here. This is my witch hat, and you have a witch here. She has a pointy nose like this,

and she has a wart on the end of her nose. A wart, it's just like a little growth. It's

kind of I think a bacteria thing. Anyway, it's not really important, but the

point is in the book, I was reading it to where I read the wrong thing, so I actually

made a mistake with my English. This is a common thing you'll see natives do. In the

text, it said she had a poisonous wart at the end of her nose, and I thought it was,

and I was really just reading it quickly, she had a poisonous wart on the end of her

nose or just a wart on the end of her nose. So, here we have two different things here.

We're talking about at and on. Now, I thought about this and I actually explained it to

my daughter. I sometimes do this, so I'm teaching lessons to her really the same way I teach

them to you. But I know students have lots of questions about this, and so I thought

I would make a video. So, in this case, I just wanted to demonstrate

these two things here, because really you can be talking about the exact same thing

and using two different words and it really means almost the same thing, but there's still

a slight difference there. I know a lot of learners care about that slight difference,

so let's talk about that. Now, in this case, on, it really is just referring to a specific

place on a physical location. So, any time you have something like this where something

is on your face, it doesn't need to be just on the top. It can be on the side of something,

so she could have a wart right here on her face. She could have a wart on her ear. It

could be on her chin even. So, it doesn't need to be on the physical top of something.

It just needs to be touching that surface. Does that make sense? So, on, remember it

doesn't just mean on the top. So, natives understand touching something is really the

key here. But the other word here, at, what are we talking

about? Really we're talking about a physical area, rather than just a specific point. So,

on really can be describing something on this physical location, but you see, anything inside

this area can be at the end of her nose. So, on the end of her nose, like right here, it

might not be like just on the tip. It's kind of near that spot, so we say at the end of

her nose. The, again, difference here, it could be actually like inside her nose right

here, and in that case we could say it was in her nose, but we could also say it's at

the end of her nose. So, any time we're talking about a physical area like this, where something

could be around this, we can say at, because we're talking about that general area.

Now, just to make this a bit more clear, let me erase this and just cover a few more examples.

The first one here is if we have an intersection, so if we imagine this is a street here, these

are some crosswalks, and you've got a cars driving up over here, and we just put a person

right here standing at the corner. So, right here I'm at the corner, at the corner. Now,

I can also say I'm physically ... Again, remember something is touching that area. So, if I'm

standing here, I'm also on the corner. Here, again, we can use either of these words

and we're talking about basically the same thing. It's like 99% the same, but the slight

difference is that we're talking about here I'm physically standing on this area, so I'm

touching the surface of it, but I can talk about being at this area as well. So, I could

be standing really anywhere around here and really be in or, excuse me, on the corner,

or I could be standing at the corner as well, but really the difference is just am I thinking

about the general area of something, or am I talking about the physical location, if

I'm touching the surface of that thing. With this idea, remember this isn't just a

like a two dimensional circle. It's like a ball, a sphere. So, I could actually be under

the street. If I'm standing on the corner, but I'm not on the corner, I'm under it, I'm

no longer on the corner. I'm actually under the corner in that sense, but I'm still at

the corner, because it's within the same space. Does that make sense? Again, we're talking

about the difference between a physical area, like we're talking about touching a physical

space, or talking about are we within that same area? Let's go a little bit deeper with

this, where I'm going to talk about another word here, and so this is going to just compare

at, within. I used these same examples when I sent a recent email to subscribers and I

was talking about that with images, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about this

just in detail here with a video, so you can actually hear me and see me describing this

as well. Now, if I imagine I'm at a restaurant like

this, I could be sitting right here. We're going to put a chair right here and a little

table, so I'm in a restaurant or I'm at a restaurant. Which am I? Now, in this case,

again, it's the difference between a physical location. In is going to describe me being

physically inside, in the same way that if I were up here, I'm sitting up on the top

of the restaurant, I'm actually on. Here I am on the restaurant, and here I am in the

restaurant, but in both cases I could be here or here. We're going to draw our little line.

Again, the area is covering the whole area here and I'm at in all of these places. If

I call a friend of mine and I say, "Hey, I'm at the restaurant right now, I'm at the restaurant,"

it just means I'm within this space somewhere. Now, obviously natives aren't really thinking

about this so much, and if you ask a native, "What's the difference between being at somewhere

and in somewhere?", usually people aren't thinking about it, but they understand this

and they just have a sense that this is how it works, but they have this sense because

they've learned these. Really they've, kind of almost like a computer, they fed their

mind so many examples of how these things work. Is this in or at, in or at? Over time

they develop a sense for that, so I'm trying to help you speed that up by really just explaining

what it is. But does this make sense? Hopefully it does, because if you understand this, then

you can use it fluently. You really understand where am I in some relationship and you can

say, "I'm in the restaurant," or you can still be at to the restaurant right here. You can

still be at the restaurant. Oh no. I lost my pen. Look at that. We've

got a blooper. So, here I am. I'm in, I'm on, and I'm at in both of these cases. Now,

I can actually be outside. If I'm standing out here, now I'm not in the restaurant and

I'm not on the restaurant right here, but I am still at the restaurant, because I am

within this space. Again, it's not like there's a certain amount of space. It's just a general

idea. So, I could be at the parking lot outside and in my car. Here is me sitting in my car.

I'm a really bad artist here, but it's the same idea. I'm still at the restaurant.

So, often when you'll hear native speakers talking to each other about making plans for

something, if they're going to, for example, going to see a movie, they would say, "Okay.

I'll meet you at the movie theater," but because this is more general, it's talking about the

area, people will say, "Where at the theater. Where specifically are you talking about?

Do you mean inside the theater? Do you mean outside the theater? Do you mean at a particular

location in the theater?" Natives will actually have these conversations. So, you can say,

"I'll meet you at that place," but if it's a pretty big place, then you'll have to usually

say, "Where specifically would you like to meet?" Hopefully all this makes sense, but

if you understand it the same way natives do ... and this is really how natives are

learning it. They're just in situations and they're connecting the situation with the

vocabulary. This is really important. When you're learning

like a native, so you can speak like a native, you're connecting the situation with the vocabulary.

You're not learning from your native vocabulary to English. This is why it gets really confusing

for people, because, as an example, maybe I'm learning Japanese or I'm a native Japanese

speaker and I'm trying to take a preposition or some other word that I already know and

I'm wondering, okay, like day. This is like where you're doing something, or I'm to use

neat. So, if I'm doing something or in a certain location, how do I translate this into English?

That's the wrong way to think about that. If you think about it through translations,

this is why you hesitate and then have to translate and think about grammar rules when

you speak, but if you understand it like a native, and hopefully I've given you a really

good example of that in this lesson as well, hopefully that makes sense.

So, remember, connect the idea here, always be learning. Think about the situation and

then connect that with the English vocabulary that you're listening to. This is, again,

the same thing that native children are doing as they're learning the language, and that's

why they speak fluently. So, it's not about how many words you know. It's how you learn.

This is why, again, it's so important you're connecting the vocabulary with with the actual

situation and you're not trying to think about how do I translate something. If that made

sense, give this video a big like and start using these correctly when you go out and

meet natives. Hopefully, if you have understood this, you will be able to do that.

Well, that's the end of this video. I hope you have enjoyed it. As usual, do click that

like button. The YouTube is not sharing my videos for some reason. So, a lot of people

will mail me and say, "Hey. It's nice to see you making videos again," but there are new

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happen to you, click that like button, subscribe, and also click that little bell icon, so you

get notified when new videos are released. Now, last thing I'd like you to do is post

a comment below this video and let me know if you understood this and if you feel more

confident using it, and also let me know what other grammar points you struggle with.

One thing, I'll give you a little bit of secret here, because a lot of people ask me how do

I teach and they want to know more specifically about the ways I'm doing things. What I'm

doing here really is helping you contrast things the same way a native does. So, a native

is not just learning on. Theyre learning on connected with in or at. They're learning

all these things together and learning how to connect them. This is why I create the

courses I do and especially Frederick. Frederick learned to read the new app we created, so

that you can actually teach yourself by comparing different things yourself, the same way in

native does. You can learn about all these things at EnglishAnyone.com.

But right now just click that like button. Post a comment below this video. Let me know

what you'd liked about it. Also, tell me about a grammar point you struggle with, so that

I can take it, teach it to you the native way, so you can finally use it fluently. That's

it for this video. I hope you have enjoyed it, and I look forward to seeing you in the

next one. To just improve your speaking confidence, sound more native, and really just to become

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