preferir sobre?
Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 12:21 pm
Yesterday I read a bar notice lauding the virtues of a Brazilian beer by the name Tauber, which is far from being the most popular one (it doesn't matter to me, anyway, I don't drink). What caught my eye was something like this, which was laid out in 10 statements to give the reader the semblance of the 10 commandments of beer drinkers:
Preferir a Tauber sobre todas as outras cervejas
To prefer Tauber over/above all other beers.
I had seen prefer over/above before (but only in English) and that preferir sobre was SO strange. The canonical preposition is a: Preferir a Tauber a todas as outras cervejas, and do que is also used (in spite of some grammarians' scorn) in everyday language. But sobre?
How powerful is linguistic contamination? How ever powerful it may be, I highly doubt whether the person responsible for inditing those commandments has any grasp of the English language, especially of its nuances. Or is it possible that change can converge to the same point in different individuals, notwithstanding their mother tongue?
By the way,
prefer Prefer is most often used in constructions that do not involve prepositions. However, when it is used to copmare two things in the same sentence, the second, especially if it is a noun or pronoun is usually introduced by to:
Movement is always to be preferred to inaction - Normal Mailer, Adverstisements for Myself, 1959
... monarch butterflies, who prefer them to any other flower - Eleanor Perenyi, Green Thoughts, 1983
... he prefers sweaters and slacks to suits - Current Biography, July 1965
Sometimes other prepositions are used. The OED notes above and before as being used forerly (George Washington used before). Over is occasionally used:
... but who, nevertheless, are preferred over the A type or the D type - William J. Reilly, Life Planning for College Students, 1954
This construction is especially frequent in adverstisements for products where doctor or housewives of some other group will be said to prefer one brand over all others.
This is why, by and by, I doubt the term native speaker means anything. If any foreign student of mine had written that, I would have corrected it. If he asked me why, I would simply say, "Nobody talks like that."
Brazilian dude
Preferir a Tauber sobre todas as outras cervejas
To prefer Tauber over/above all other beers.
I had seen prefer over/above before (but only in English) and that preferir sobre was SO strange. The canonical preposition is a: Preferir a Tauber a todas as outras cervejas, and do que is also used (in spite of some grammarians' scorn) in everyday language. But sobre?
How powerful is linguistic contamination? How ever powerful it may be, I highly doubt whether the person responsible for inditing those commandments has any grasp of the English language, especially of its nuances. Or is it possible that change can converge to the same point in different individuals, notwithstanding their mother tongue?
By the way,
prefer Prefer is most often used in constructions that do not involve prepositions. However, when it is used to copmare two things in the same sentence, the second, especially if it is a noun or pronoun is usually introduced by to:
Movement is always to be preferred to inaction - Normal Mailer, Adverstisements for Myself, 1959
... monarch butterflies, who prefer them to any other flower - Eleanor Perenyi, Green Thoughts, 1983
... he prefers sweaters and slacks to suits - Current Biography, July 1965
Sometimes other prepositions are used. The OED notes above and before as being used forerly (George Washington used before). Over is occasionally used:
... but who, nevertheless, are preferred over the A type or the D type - William J. Reilly, Life Planning for College Students, 1954
This construction is especially frequent in adverstisements for products where doctor or housewives of some other group will be said to prefer one brand over all others.
This is why, by and by, I doubt the term native speaker means anything. If any foreign student of mine had written that, I would have corrected it. If he asked me why, I would simply say, "Nobody talks like that."
Brazilian dude
