When to use "à" and when to use "de"... a French Grammar Hell

from alienteachers.com

I've been struggling with correctly using French prepositions since the beginning... that is the beginning of my study of French. Prepositional use in English can be totally arbitrary and it seems it’s the same in French. 

For instance, in the northern U.S. we “wait for the bus” while further south in the States “we wait on the bus”. As Southern expressions press into traditionally northern sounds, language swirls around us in the Midwest like storm front patterns: Northern and Southern regions collide instead of hot and cold weather fronts. From my example, the second prepositional use, "on", is becoming more common every day. (So far as I know, nobody stands on top of a bus to wait for it, but that is the image using the word "on" in place of "for" conjures up in my mind.)

Another example of what seems to be arbitrary prepositional use: When my toddling daughter was learning to speak, she would say “You’re not the boss of me!”  I found this statement awkward and kept trying to correct her to say something like, “You’re not my boss!” 

 

Well, the problem with that statement (besides the discipline issues involved) was that the language around me had changed as fast as a storm blowing through and her sentence is now the more current version. I still don’t like the additional preposition in the sentence when none is needed. Shrugging it off, I lost that language battle.

I’ve been working on correct usage of the French articles with prepostions in “Grammaire progressive du Français”, a C.L.E. publication. CLE International

Making French prepositional issues even more complicated, there is the matter of contracting male, female, and plural forms of articles with the prepositions à and de. The choices of these contractions are du, des, au, aux, à la, à l’, de la, and de l’.

This work book states that when the idea is

• appartenance (affiliation) -- de is applied,
• lieu (place) -- either de or à is used in different situations, and
• avec (with) -- à is used in a flagrantly arbitrary style.

I have done all right with affiliation which seems to mean mostly possession of something (Henry’s dog or the color of the bicycle).

I’m OK with place for the most part but both de and à can designate place and I am trying to sort that one out. (We are going au restaurant but près du bureau.)

Language isn't science. (carbonfixated.com)

The idea of à as meaning avec, though, really forces an English speaker into new corners of grammatical hell. "À" pops up all over in places that an English speaker just wouldn’t conceive of… so this is the arbitrariness of prepositions. 

“It’s just usage, Suzan, get over it!”

As a practical matter, I am working through grammar workbook problems and trying to remember specific situations like pastry shop signs that read, “tartes aux pommes” not “tartes avec pommes” or “tartes de pommes”. Like gender, this is one of those grammar issues that has to be learned by developing a “feeling” for the use of these preposition through experience with the language, not by reasoning it out. 

Grammar is the point where science and language go their separate ways.

If you want to order pastries, you must know your prepositions! Photo from paloma81.blogspot.com