I'm an English teacher and I.. sometimes I use your videos to show to my
students, and my question is: I have a lot of questions about ON/AT/IN.
So when we're talking about longer periods of time, we use IN.
Generally. So, I was born in 1988. I was born in the springtime. I was born in
spring. But that's a, you know, a year, you could say "in the nineteenth century."
That's a century there, right? In the second millennium... in spring... you can
also... I think the smallest unit of time that you can use it for is a month. So,
I was born in April. So anything from April up to millennia we use IN for the
longest period of time. In between we use ON. So, I was born on a Wednesday. And again,
this is just... I don't know why it's like this; English is just like this, and I
know to say IN or ON because that's what my parents always said, and that's
what my sister said, and that's what my classmates say. But for learners, you can
think of it as this pyramid. I don't think of it as the pyramid. I just say
it 'cause I know, you know? On Friday if you could please turn in your
homeworks that'd be great. I think it's typically days of the week.
Oh, and you also say "on the twentieth." So, I was born in April. I was born on the twentieth day
of the month. Or we could say... this is why, for example,
we use...
When you're specifying a day in English, you say ON. So I was born in April, but
I was born on April twentieth, because it's talking about a day. It's a shorter unit
of time here. And then finally, the little itty-bitty pieces of time have to do
more with hours and minutes. So, I was born at 4:44am. I was born at 4:44am.
At noon... at midnight... the clock strikes twelve. At noon or at midnight.
And I'm trying to think. I just thought of an exception, because there are, like
anything, there are exceptions, but generally this is how it goes... Let me think about this.
Okay. One exception here is: we use IN for long periods of time, but I could say I was
born in the morning. We still say "at night." Like, things happen at night. But
that's not an exception to the rule, "at night" or "during the nighttime." But it's
in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening, are all IN down there.
But this AT would be "at night."