Job Discussion Forums

[dyak]

In a formal sense, when applying for a job for example.

I'm interested at the prospect of -ing

or

I'm interested in the prospect of -ing

or

I'm interested by the prospect of -ing

or are all three ok?

Can they be used universally or does it depend on context?



Cheers

[matttheboy]

I'd use 'by' and 'in' interchangeably without noticing but would never use 'at'. Although i have an idea that i'd use 'by' if i thought there was a slightly stronger chance of the prospect actually happening. Just a gut feeling, feel free to disagree...

[Glenski]

According to Swan, only the second one is correct.
Personally, I found the other two to be unnatural sounding.

[basiltherat]

frankly, our prepositions are dreadful. theyre a real nightmare for students of any other language. inconsistency is the rule.

yesterday :

Abdul; "My mother is married with a businessman."
Teacher: Actually, Abdul, we should say married 'to'. A man is married 'to' a woman. Try again !
Abdul: But teacher ... why ???
Teacher: That's just the way it is.
Abdul: ??????

Thank God that in the majority of cases there is no misunderstanding.
basil

[Stephen Jones]

"interested in" has over 5,500 hits on the byu concordance compared to a mere 22 for intersted by. Swan seems to have got this one right.

Incidentally Basil, I fail to see why English prepostions are any more of a nightmare for the learner than prepositions in any other language.

You just have to learn 'married to' as a lexical item, exactly as you would learn 'casado con' if you were learning Spanish.

No more illogical than saying 'bread' in one language and 'pan' in another.

[basiltherat]

Yes, point taken but ,while not strictly a preposition in grammatical terms, though, students find such expressions as filling out a form and filling in a form (having the same meaning) as quite ridiculous.

In fact, our son recently sent me a long list of such complexities of English language. Think he found it on the internet somewhere. Deleted it though. I'll ask him to resend it and post it here. It was quite amusing.
basil

[Stephen Jones]

Only ridiculous because they are breaking the lexical item into two parts (verb + preposition) instead of treating it as a whole.

We see nothing ridiculous about 'start' and 'begin' having the same meaning even though they do not have a letter in common. The problem is that we are treating phrasal verbs as grammatical items instead of lexical ones.

[Glenski]

[valley_girl]

I agree with Glenski. Also consider this: you "fill in" the blanks but you can't "fill out" the blanks. "Fill out" seems to suggest completing an entire document/report/application. Mind you, I haven't looked it up.

[dyak]

It's interesting, 'fill out', in that sense is not really used in British English, we would just use fill in for both.

'Fill out' is used here to suggest that someone is getting fatter or more rotund, as it were, and probably in American English too.

[poro]

[dmb]

I'm confused. I think I would ask my students to fill out the form but to fill it in. Does it make a diffrenece if you use a noun or pronoun?

[poro]

[basiltherat]

getting back to the point, though, i still believe that english preposition usage is relatively hard to master. consider the fact, for example, that in indonesian/malay we use the same preposition for time,day, month and year - pada - whereas in english one has to select the correct one from 3 (in, on or at). clearly, by using the wrong one wud not in most cases damage fundemental communication nevertheless, it wud be considered wrong.
also for places e.g buildings, towns, cities, countries and more exact locations such as corner and edge, malay mostly uses just one preposition - di -while in in english, ... well ........

id be interested to know which other languages have more than one preposition for different locations and times.

basil
just going off at a tangent here,
in malay, upside down, wrong way round. inside out and back to front are all translated into indonesian/maly as terbalik. it always used to amuse me when i put my jacket on inside out, upside down and back to front and asked them in what way i was wearing the jacket. the response was usually 'crazy'

[poro]