English Language & Usage Asked by S.Z. on December 17, 2020
To clarify, I’ve asked the question on ELL, and received unsatisfactory results, and this site seems to be my last hope.
In an English textbook used in China, a sentence reads like this:
We (Chinese) eat boat cakes at the Dragon Boat Festival.
I think the preposition AT is wrong, and ON should be the right one to use in this sentence because: there IS a set date for the Dragon Boat Festival, which lasts for one day, and there are almost NO activities held at home NOR events for anybody to go to, except that some Chinese eat the “boat cakes” (at home). The festival in question commemorates an ancient patriotic poem in Chinese history, but in reality, modern Chinese baically take it as a very good excuse to have a day off, and hence it became a 1-day national holiday as of 2008.
Am I right to use ON?
Please feel free to believe or confirm that “the Dragon Boat Festival in itself is a problematic term or translation”, and hence the sentence is invalid and has to be rephrased.
The use of the term "festival" leads one to think of an event held at a particular location; it follows that one would use "at" as the appropriate preposition. If one were to characterize the event as a "holiday" the implication would be that it is a widely celebrated event that is not limited to a particular location; in this circumstance, "on" would be the appropriate preposition. So I think the deciding factor would be how the event is characterized.
Answered by Liz on December 17, 2020
'On' the dragon boat festival cannot be right because the festival lasts for more than a day therefore 'at' us the correct preposition to use.
You definitely do need 'the' you cannot in English say 'at dragon boat festival or on dragon boat festival ' definite article must be present.
Answered by ParisG on December 17, 2020
Get help from others!
Recent Questions
Recent Answers
© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP