Ahem. Las Cruces is not in Texas.
mbh, citizen of Noo Messko.
Sorry. I’m weak on my geography east of the Sierras.
You can certainly say “he is in the school,” with yet another meaning, that is, somebody who is physically in the school. For example, I’m walking around in the parking lot of a school and Bob disappears, so I ask Mary, “Where’d Bob go?” “Oh, he’s in the school.” If she said “Oh, he’s at school” that would have the meaning of he’s in the school, doing something school-related, or something to that effect. But we can say “at school,” “in school,” and “in the school” with all different meanings.
And “the” before a freeway number is also a Southern Ontario (Canada) thing: the 401, the 405, the 427, the Queen Elizabeth Way…
Exactly. It’s especially useful if someone is at a school but not attending. For example, “I’m at the school, I’m picking my kids up early.” If you say, “I’m at school,” the implication is that you are taking a class there (or engaged in some other school activity).
I also think it’s odd, in the US we don’t say a person is “at university”, but we will say they are “at college” or “in college”. Why? I have no clue.
The Louvre in Paris?
The Mall (D.C.)
If you were in the parking lot of the school, you might say “He is in the school,” but more likely I would say “He’s inside.”
Much more common would be the distinction between “at school” and “at the school.”
Nope, it’s not a big deal. The government has quietly started using “The Yukon” again.
I guess there was context in my head. I was thinking of my parochial school, where the parking lot is for both the school and the church. “In the school” certainly isn’t used as often as the other phrases, but it is a valid construction with its own meaning that I’ve used before.
Still consistent with the rivers thing.
Has anyone mentioned some countries that seem to take a definite article (correct me if I’m wrong) but not in English: for example, “the [Iraq]”. I am not sure if [The?] Sudan commonly takes the article in English, but the official name is indeed “The Republic of the Sudan”.
Well, I didn’t say it was invalid.
I did say it would be much more common to distinguish between:
-
“Where’s Billy?” “He’s at school.” That is, school is in session and Billy is attending.
-
“Where’s Dad?” “He’s at the school.” Dad is physically located at the school for some reason other than attending it as a student.
Same distinction for other locations, such as college. But, strangely, not for “hospital” in U.S. English. We say “at the hospital” for both. We don’t say “at hospital.” Dunno why.
Perhaps “in hospital” or “in the hospital” are more common than “at hospital”? There was a corpus website to quickly search for such statistics.
In the U.S., we don’t say “in hospital” either. We say “in the hospital” for both.
As said above, “in hospital” is a non-US English construction. But I’m chiming in more to respond to the second sentence. You’re thinking of Google ngram.
Here’s the results for “in school,” “at school,” “in the school,” “at the school”:
“In the school” turns out to be more popular than “at the school,” but, remember, this could include results like “in the school building” or “in the school parking lot,” just as “at the school” could include “at the school meeting” or “at the school fund-raiser” or whatnot. It’s interesting to see how their popularity has changed over time, too. In the mid-1800s, “in the school” was more commonly found as a sequence of three words in text than the other three.
Chiming in with my usual Welsh wonkiness…yn Gymraeg, they use the definite article in different ways than in English. Instead of going “to school” or “to chapel” you’d go “i’r ysgol” (to the school) or “i’r capel” (to the chapel). Where’s your kid? He’s “yn yr ysgol”: “in the school,” shades of difference to “at school.”
As for place names, there are a handful that use the def. article. Abergavenny is “y Fenni” and Welshpool is “y Trallwng.” I know the English often skip either the definite article or designation for named objects. Like just saying “Concorde” instead of “the Concorde.” I’d personally say “Mount Snowdon” whereas I’ve only heard the English refer to the mountain as “Snowdon” but the Welsh call it “yr Wyddfa” with the definite article.
I tried www.english-corpora.org
| ️ | in hospital | in the hospital | at hospital | at the hospital | the |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| British | 1697 | 271 | 51 | 401 | 5973437 |
| American | 1352 | 9077 | 135 | 5046 | 50067877 |
(the American corpus was about 1 billion words, British was 100 million)
So if we weighted it for the size of the corpus, it would be 1679 “in hospital” vs 135 “in hospital” in British vs American English. And I’m betting most of the American "in hospital"s are parts of longer phrases like “in hospital procedures” as that phrasing on its own is not idiomatic US English.
Be seeing you.