Sit in vs. on the train

[Allen165]

"I was sitting in the train going home the other day when the man opposite me leant over and said: "Excuse me, but have you got the right time?" (Miles Kington: A computer never knows it's a quarter to seven - Miles Kington, Columnists - The Independent.)

"Sitting on the train" sounds better to me. Is "sitting in the train" correct?

Thanks!

[5jj]

I would probably say 'on', but have no objection to 'in'.

[TheParser]

"I was sitting in the train going home the other day when the man opposite me leant over and said: "Excuse me, but have you got the right time?" (Miles Kington: A computer never knows it's a quarter to seven - Miles Kington, Columnists - The Independent.)

"Sitting on the train" sounds better to me. Is "sitting in the train" correct?

Thanks!

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


Jasmin,


(1) As we Americans like to say, I think that this is a win-win

situation for everyone. Everyone is correct. Everyone is a winner!!!

(a) Yes, "ride on a train" is surely more common in American

English.

(b) I suspect that "ride in a train" is used by some British English

speakers. (As you know, The Independent is one of London's

quality newspapers.)

(2) One commenter in a 2006 post at englishforums.com made an

excellent point:

"in" is usually used for smaller vehicles; "on" for larger ones. He

most helpfulfully pointed out that we "get in(to) a car" but we

"get on" a train, bus, ship, etc.

(3) I also found a scholarly book (Google books) entitled Corpora in

Cognitive Linguistics by Walter de Gruyter. He gave this:

English: (people) sit on the train.

German: im Zug sitzen ("sit in the train")

Russian: sidet' / exat/ na poezde ("sit/ go on the train")

P.S. I found another Google book discussing English as spoken in

Malaysia (which was formerly governed by the United Kingdom). It

gave a sentence something like: He prefers riding in a train.

[SoothingDave]

I'm wondering why they would ask you for the time if you didn't know it was the right time.

[Tdol]

They could suspect that something was wrong with their watch and want to check against something known to be accurate.