Preposition song
If you find prepositions tricky, then there is someone out there on the internet ready with a prepositions song to save you from mental distress. In fact, there are a few of them.
Some videos are glossy with healthy production values and freshly written material. Other musicians decide to write new lyrics to a familiar tune like Yankee Doodle Dandy or The Grand Old Duke of York, and publish the lyrics instead of recording themselves for YouTube posterity. Some simply recite all the prepositions they can think of while the background music plays; I’m not sure how that will help anyone understand prepositions any better.
There is a hip-hop version of the preposition song, although I’m not convinced of their street credentials, but the most popular version seems to be by The Bazillions. It has a touch of Flight of the Conchords, and some animation, which is crucial in a meaningful attempt to get the prepositions pushed to center stage.
If you think you might have what it takes to add to the online stocks of preposition songs, then warm up your video camera and get practicing. What are you waiting for? Get on it (prepositional pun intended). Here are some lyrics that might give you some ideas.
Oh, the grand old Duke of York He loved his prepositions So he marched his troops to the top of the hill And then explained their mission
‘You know that up means up And the opposite is down Well, those words are prepositions And they go before the noun
‘Some of them manage time And others describe space And others are a bit abstract Which makes them hard to place
‘You’re going to tour around And spread the word about Till everybody’s sure that They can point prepositions out’
So, the Duke of York’s brigade Marched off into the world With the flag of prepositions Which they’d carefully unfurled They helped folk to discover All about phrasal verbs And how the up in shut up Is not a preposition word | How the preposition object Is always objective case And how object and preposition Form a prepositional phrase
They pulled the prepositions Out of every text they saw They made sure everybody knew Just what complements were for
They demonstrated in They illustrated through They performed every preposition That they were able to
And when they were done, they were done And when they were out, that was it After a prepositions tour like that They had really done their bit
As Churchill never said, Though some people think he did, To show how a phrasal verb works Up with that I will not put
‘And one last final word It’s been confirmed, my friends That dangling prepositions Are okay left at the end.’ |
Preposition song version 2
Oh, the grand old Duke of York He loved his prepositions So he marched his troops to the top of the hill And then explained their mission
‘You know that up means up And the opposite is down Well, those words are prepositions And they go before the noun
‘Some of them manage time And others describe space And others are a bit abstract Which makes them hard to place
‘You’re going to tour around And spread the word about Till everybody’s sure that They can point prepositions out’
So, the Duke of York’s brigade Marched off into the world With the flag of prepositions Which they’d carefully unfurled
They sailed aboard some boats About which fish would dart Above the Mariana Trench According to their charts Across the seas they sailed And after years of feeling special Against a stony shore they crashed Two weeks ahead of schedule
Rocks ripped along the ship Left huge holes alongside Amid all the confusion Amidst the chaos, someone died
Someone among the crew Amongst them she’d not been noticed Around her neck she wore a chain As a sentimental focus | As far asthey could tell As of midnight just gone As per the last log entry And as regards what had gone wrong
As well as being a soldier And aside from military duty She’d died astride the ship’s port side At around eleven thirty
Death lay in wait athwart her path Atop the wooden mast Barring her road to excellence Because of dodgy maths
Before the ship had struck the rocks She’d sat behind her mates Below the sails, she watched the waves Beneath the Pearly Gates
Beside her sat her abacus The beads between her fingers Then she was snatched beyond the veil Where no one but her lingers
By the time the boat had struck the reef By means of cute deduction Used circa 12 BC by Greeks She was close to a revelation
Concerning the fastest route to plot Despite the many factors Down the Jet Stream, round the Poles But due to the disaster
That struck during her sums Good, except for one mistake Excluding the curvature of the Earth Following her coffee break
For reasons difficult to tell It had slipped from her mind Given the workload that she had In her job poorly defined |
And another preposition song
In accordancewith her wishes In addition to the flowers In case of a truly grave mistake In front of all the mourners
In lieu of oak or ash or pine In place of coffin closed In point of fact, she wanted glass In spite of what it showed
Including all the guts and stuff That should have been inside her Instead of dashed upon the rocks As though fed into a grinder
Like many others, she was scared Of being buried minus death Seeming near death, but quite alive Next to everybody else
Notwithstanding all these careful plans She had drifted off our planet On a rainbow to the Promised Land On account of all her efforts
On behalf of God, St Peter said On top of your rewards You can sneak back onto your ship While it’s opposite some fjords |