Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[gsjackie]

Dear teacher,

Please tell me which sentence is correct.
And what's the difference?

A1:Reading newspaper every morning is important to my father.
A2:Reading newspaper every morning is important for my father.

B1:That sounds boring to me.
B2:That sounds boring for me.

How do I decide which preposition to use?

Thank you.

[pugachevV]

You use "to". It's a convention. You have to learn it and remember it.

[gsjackie]

Dear pugachevV,
Thanks for your reply.
But how about "be difficult for "?
Why is that we use "for here instead of "to"?
As an EFL learner, it is hard to use some prepositions.
I look them up in the dictionary, however, I'm still confused with the definition and usage.

[pugachevV]

I think all languages have some things that are difficult to remember because they don't seem to follow a rule.
In German, I found it difficult to remember the gender of the nouns, as they do not seem logical, sometimes.
You just have to learn them by heart.

[teflon]

dear gsjackie

as pug says, the use of so called 'prepositions' is really governed only by convention and it is of little or no use trying to discover some kind of rule because there is none.

As a learner you might be much better off just learning the words in a group (eg X is difficult for Y - 'to be difficult for') rather than trying to find some deep meaning in the word 'for' - because after all, the written 'word' is only a conventionalised way of presenting what are continuous streams of sound in speech.

Also, you might like to contrast the two sentences "he was good to her" and "he was good for her"

English speakers would understand "he was good to her" as meaning that that he treated her well; while "he was good for her" could mean that he did not treat her well but she was able to benefit from that experience.

Thus, maybe if someone is "good to you" it might not be "good for you" because you might get a bit too fat and lazy for example, or they might be trying to deceive you etc....

I think some might say that this sort of to/for difference could apply in the phrases "to be important to" and "to be important for" also...

[missdaredevil]