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How small does a land-mass have to be before you live “on” it, rather than “in” it?
I grew up (in or on ) Long Island.
(in New York)
I've been hearing both versions. Please explain which one is correct and why.
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Anderson Silva
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2Related How small does a land mass have to be before you live "on" it rather than "in" it? – Kit Z. Fox Jun 06 '11 at 12:18
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@Kit: Is there a difference between commenting that this Q is 'related', and voting to close it for the same reason? – FumbleFingers Jun 06 '11 at 12:39
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@FumbleFingers: there's no option to vote to close because two questions are related. If they are duplicates, on the other hand... – Jun 06 '11 at 12:45
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@FumbleFingers "Related" just means that it may be of interest, given the topic. If I had the power to close-vote, and I thought this answer was a duplicate, I would have used "Possible duplicate" and the link, and also voted to close. As this question is worded, I don't think it is a duplicate. I think an NGrams comparison would probably sufficiently answer the question. – Kit Z. Fox Jun 06 '11 at 12:46
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@Rhodri: Well so far as I recall, the specific case of Long Island was covered in the 'related' question, so to me this one is just a subset of that one. We just end up with more questions and more answers, but no more actual information in the site as a whole. I didn't realise people's actions might be constrained by rep, though. – FumbleFingers Jun 06 '11 at 12:51
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@FumbleFingers: then vote to close as a duplicate. I'm inclined to agree, by the way :-) – Jun 06 '11 at 12:55
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1@Kit: I don't think an NGrams comparison would answer the question; it might even give us completely misleading information. For one thing, there could be different uses in different contexts — how would an NGram show this? And, there could be countless phrases like "in Long Island school districts" or "on Long Island bus lines" — how would we separate these out? – Kosmonaut Jun 06 '11 at 12:56
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@Kit: Thanks for the explanation. But we can only think what we think. Which in my case means it is a duplicate, so I shan't feel I've done anything wrong in voting that way. If 4 others agree, it'll get closed. If not, I guess I'll gradually start changing the way I think. – FumbleFingers Jun 06 '11 at 12:57
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@FumbleFingers I certainly understand why you would vote to close. Had I that power, I would be on the fence myself. The answer to your excellent question would answer this one if we could clearly determine whether Long Island was a geographic or political region. This is why some sort of usage comparison would be helpful, but @Kosmonaut has made the very good point that this would be difficult using NGrams. – Kit Z. Fox Jun 06 '11 at 13:08
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@Kit: I just checked the original question. I'm UK, so it's not really my pigeon, but at least a couple of people made the point that Long Island is a geographic rather than political entity, and I didn't see any dissent on that one. The Falklands, on the other hand, is a much more ambivalent case. But who's to say which particular cases have a definite right/wrong usage, and which ones are just 'arguable'. I like identifying the general area of that margin, but I don't care much about arguing specific cases. – FumbleFingers Jun 06 '11 at 14:53
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I grew up on Long Island, and I always heard "on" then. But lately I've been hearing lots of news reporters refer to people who live "in" Long Island. It sounds wrong to my ears, because it's not a single political entity, but it's becoming common. Google Ngrams also shows the propertion of "in" increasing in recent years. – Barmar Apr 01 '22 at 23:24
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Generally you live on an island but in a jurisdiction. So if Long Island were a town or borough or other political entity, it would be ambiguous, but that isn't the case today.
Monica Cellio
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A nice, clear definition, but the notion of "jurisdiction" is a fuzzy one. I suspect that Long Island has enough of an identity as a "town" (not the right word, but you know what I mean) that people still consider that they live in it. – Jun 06 '11 at 12:49
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Long Island, as used by New Yorkers, is not the entire island, but the island exclusive of those parts contained in New York City proper (that is, the island minus Brooklyn and Queens). So it is neither a land mass nor a political jurisdiction. I lived in the New Jersey suburbs for nearly two decades, I would definitely say on Long Island, and I'm pretty sure this is the preposition predominantly used by residents. – Peter Shor Jun 06 '11 at 12:59
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+1, as in "I grew up in Rhode Island" would suggest the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, while "I grew up on Rhode Island" would suggest Aquidneck Island. – Henry Jun 06 '11 at 14:14
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On Long Island
as the linked to question describes it's a question of how large the land mass is - but ultimately it's down to common usage.
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Um... no, actually. The relevance of land mass size was my ignorant supposition when I posted that original question. I was put straight by the eventual concensus that in fact it's mainly down to whether you're talking about a political/cultural, or a geographical location. – FumbleFingers Jun 06 '11 at 14:57
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In The Orkneys (not a county) / on the Isle of White (a county) - I think it's largely historic usage. – mgb Jun 06 '11 at 15:11
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Well OP has accepted your answer, so obviously you're not alone in your thinking. But a lot more people went for the political/geographical rationale on the original Q, so I'd have to class yours as a minority opinion regardless of whether I agree with it or not. Though in fact I think the in/on switch would be so trivial and easily done that I doubt historic usage would normally be a significant factor. – FumbleFingers Jun 06 '11 at 15:25