Fun with grammar

I know I put most of you to sleep a year or two ago when I wrote about prepositions, but I continue to be fascinated by the subject, so here we go.

I got a note yesterday from one of our Swiss employees reminding everyone to have their snow tires swapped for their summer tires. (Everyone in Switzerland does that. No one here uses all-season radials.) She said that this should be done "until the end of April." Now, what she really means is "by the end of April." The reason she said "until" is that in her head, she's mistranslating the German word bis, which can mean "until," "through," or "by," depending on the context.

This just illustrates the point I was taught when we first moved here, which is that the meaning of prepositions in various languages is completely random. Again, let's think of the different ways we use the word "by": this book was written by me; I'm standing by the lake; I'll be there by 4:00; he was there by some strange coincidence; by the way, I'll be there next week; I'll get there by any means necessary; I get by with a little help from my friends. I'm sure you could all think of further examples to add to the list.

None of those uses of the word "by" seems related to another. Someone just grabbed whatever preposition was handy and started using it, and now, hundreds of years later, we're stuck with that original usage. By golly, I find that fascinating. Don’t you?