"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.
