Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[rice07]

Hi,

Last evening, I took a free English seminar held by missionaries in Taiwan from the United States, who offered learners there some example sentences- " Hurry! Don't be late! School starts in an hour! ". One of the missionaries told us that " school starts in an hour " meant " after an hour school starts " before I cast my doubt on that to him- in my opinion, I would construe that sentence as " school starts within an hour ". The missionary whom I asked for verifying that question turned to his companion(another missionary). It's funny that his companion held the same opinion as I did. That question ended up being resolved by the dictionary I carried with. Let's see what the dictionary(Oxford ADVANCED LEARNER'S Dictionary) said:

in prep.
...

5.during a period of time: in 2005 * in the morning * in spring

6 after a particular length of time: to return in a few minutes/hours/days/months * It will be ready in a week's time(= one week from now). * She learnt to drive in three weeks (= after three weeks she could drive).

...

Every now and again, don't you think English is quite bewildering? Although that case turned out the missionary was right- "School starts in an hour! " meant " After an hour school starts! ".

Good day!

Sincerely
rice07

[pugachevV]

The Oxford Dictionary says, it expresses the length of time before a future event is expected to happen.

In practice, I would expect the event to start in approximately an hour
(give or take a few minutes).

[Christine123]

To me, telling someone "Don't be late! School starts in one hour" is being very specific as to when school starts. If someone gives me a time frame using the preposition "in," for example "in 10 minutes," "in one hour," I would expect it to be a fairly accurate estimation of time (give or take a few minutes). If the speaker wanted to convey that something happens WITHIN a time frame, for example "within one hour," which is quite vague, I would expect he or she to use the preposition "within," and not "in."

I have heard many non-native speakers of English say that prepositions are one of the most difficult things about the language, and I can definitely understand why. English prepositions really do not have a regular and concrete system, rather more like guidelines that can often be blurry.

[rice07]

Wow, PugachevV, Christine123, what you've done for me really facilitates my understanding of English. I am happy about that!

I posted this topic in the help center, hoping that could help the best of us fond of coming here a bit. Anyway thanks heaps!