The Difference between SUR and DANS in French

Hello there, how are you? I hope you are doing well.

As you have seen in the title above, I am going to talk about the difference between SUR and DANS in French; they both are French prepositions and of course, they have dissimilar meaning.

Before we get started, do you know about French prepositions? If you don’t, let me tell you in a very basic way. So, prepositions are a word connector — they link words and can make a complex sentence. In French, they are a lot of prepositions e.g., dans, sur, à, en, de, pour, etc. I hope that give you a broad knowledge about “what is a preposition.”

Now, let’s get back to our main topic here: between SUR and DANS. First, I put primarily the use of SUR. It can be used as follows:

1. Ce livre est sur la table ‘The book is on the table’
2. Je marche sur le trottoir ‘I walk on the sidewalk’
3. Cette maison se situe sur l’avenue Beaucoeur ‘This house is located on Beaucoeur avenue’

In these 3 examples, you can clearly see that SUR means ‘ON sth.’ in English. However, it is not always the case; SUR mentions also anything related to the “internet”. For examples:

1. Ce match est diffusé sur Internet ‘That match streamed online’
2. Il a liké ce poste sur Facebook ‘He liked this post on Facebook’
3. Elle regarde cette vidéo sur YouTube ‘She watches that video on YouTube’

On the other hand, DANS mentions anything that is inside of something or places. For examples:

1. Les élèves étudient dans la classe ‘The students study in the class’
2. Nous sommes dans la gare ‘We are in the train station’
3. Mon portable est dans le sac ‘My handphone is in the bag’
4. Ils se promènent dans la rue ‘They walk in the street’

If we have differentiated SUR and DANS as the above examples, now you will see that French has a special occurrence; we might apply both prepositions in the same sentence e.g., “dans la rue” or “sur la rue”. But still, the meaning would be different.

1. Elles habitent rue Victor Hugo ‘They live in St. Victor Hugo’
   using habiter or demeurer, we normally exclude the preposition.
2. Je suis tombé(e) dans les escaliers ‘I fell down the stairs’
   Je suis tombé(e) sur la marche d’escalier ‘I fell on the stair step’
   by using SUR, you have to mention specifically like where you exactly felt.
3. Je monte dans la voiture ‘I get into the car’
   Je monte sur la moto ‘I get on the motorbike’
   voiture/métro/tramway are something you have to get inside, so you have to use dans; conversely, moto/skate you have to use sur because it is an open motorcycle that you have to get on.

Well, that’s it for today. Thank you for reading this. Do not forget to watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BSHvYZo-xsw. Turn the automatic CC on. Support my channel by SUBSCRIBE, LIKE, and SHARE. Bunch of thanks!

Au revoir !