Prepositions of place

In one line

à is the neutral "at", dans is inside something, sur is on top of it, and chez is only for people's homes and workplaces.

The table

The ones containing de contract with the article: près du parc · à côté des enfants.

Note what English leaves out. English says "next to the park", "near the station", "opposite the hotel" — with no "of" anywhere. French requires de in all three: à côté du parc, près de la gare, en face de l'hôtel. If the French preposition is two or three words long, it almost certainly ends in de, and that de then contracts with le/les.

chez — a word English has no single equivalent for

chez goes only with a person, never with a place:

English has the same idea and hides it in an apostrophe. "At the doctor**'s**", "at my sister**'s**", "at the hairdresser**'s**" — a possessive with the noun left out, and the missing noun is "place". chez is exactly that construction, given its own word. Whenever English would say "at somebody's", French says chez.

And it has a figurative use too:

Chez les Français, on mange tard. — among the French, people eat late

If the place has a name of its own, use à:

à or dans — a fine distinction

The practical rule: a destination or a general location takes à. "Inside as opposed to outside" takes dans.

dans when it is not a place

dans means in. Its core meaning is inside somewhere, but French also uses it where English says in and no place is meant:

Don't translate dans la vie on its own. The whole sentence is a fixed way to ask someone's job, like English What do you do? Answer: Je suis professeur. /ʒə sɥi pʁo.fɛ.sœʁ/ or Je travaille dans une banque. /ʒə tʁa.vaj dɑ̃z yn bɑ̃k/

dans or sur — with vehicles

This one is memorised, and it comes up in exams:

The difference between en and dans here:

The en / à rule for vehicles: if you sit inside it → en. If you sit on it, or use your own body → à.

English splits this differently and will mislead you. English says "on the train", "on the bus", "on the plane" but "in the car" — public transport takes "on", private takes "in". French does not care about that at all: if you are inside it, it is dans. dans le train, dans le bus, dans l'avion, dans la voiture. sur is only for things you sit astride — a bike, a motorbike, a horse.

Countries and cities

The full rule is in lieux-a-en-au. In summary:

Examples

Common mistakes

Why chez has no equivalent