Habiter + à / en

[Thrissel]

Salut.

Can the prepositions à and en be used interchangeably in sentences like "J'habite à/en Écosse", "Habitez-vous à/en Édimbourg?" etc? Or is there some difference, for instance one being preferred with countries and the other with cities or something like that?

[James H Smith]

Your 2nd assumption is close to the truth.

To say at, to, in a town or city use à. In the case of
French towns beginning with Le, use au (au Havre, au Mans).

To say at, to, in a country, region or area use:

en when the place name is a feminine noun, or begins with a vowel or mute h
au when the place name is a masculine noun
aux when the place name is a plural noun
à when the location is an island
dans for mountain ranges and most French départements

Therefore it is: "J'habite en l'Écosse", and "Habitez-vous à Édimbourg ?"

[Thrissel]

Oh, it's this complicated? Thanks for explaining it all at once, no doubt I'll be using this reference quite often before it becomes natural to me.

And thanks for mentioning that to uses the same "system", I'm sure I'd be presently troubled by that one as well. (To and at/in being so different in English, it probably wouldn't occur to me that the same rule may govern both senses in French.)

[James H Smith]

Yes, it does look complicated. But, like a lot of things, with a little use
it will soon become second- nature.

The French seem to see the concept of being at/in.... the same as going to....,
with only the choice of verb to distinguish between the two:

Je suis à Paris = I am at/in Paris. You would not be to Paris
Je vais à Paris = I am going to Paris. You would not be going at/in Paris

[Neil Coffey]

It is a bit complicated, but presevere and you'll get used to it! Unfortunately, which prepositions are used where is typically complicated in languages in general (it is in English).

There are actually cases in English quite close to the French situation of "to" and "at/in" merging. For example, if you think about:

He swam in the pool.
He jumped in the pool.

Now of course, English has ways to disambiguate where necessary (e.g. you can use into, you can say He jumped up and down in the pool etc). And if it comes to it so does French-- it just turns out, as in the cases above, that if there's no ambiguity, the "default" way is to use the same preposition in both cases.

Incidentally, not even French people themselves always agree on which preposition to use. For example, there's an established practice of using en/dans le with the names of counties/states/"big" administrative areas, and using à with the names of towns. But of course, this relies on a French person knowing e.g. that Essex is strictly a county, not a town, so that in practice you get variation. Similarly, there is variation with the names of French departments: poll some French speakers on whether they'd say dans l'Eure et Loire or en Eure et Loire and see how much concensus you get...

[Thrissel]

That's right - I have some Gaelic and Russian, so I know that one can only translate prepositions 'generally' but there are many differerences with particular verbs and adjectives between languages. And the Loire example reminds me that in some Gaelic dialects you ask [a question] of somebody while in others to somebody, and one could probably find an English equivalent as well.

In fact I suppose that prepositions are at least as idiomatic part of speech as any other - except perhaps articles...

[Neil Coffey]

Just a clarification-- I'm guessing this was just a typo, but just to be clear-- with countries that use en, you of course don't use the article (and actually the article isn't usually used with en per se, although there are exceptions). So:

en Écosse