Jusqu'en

Question

I have a question about when subjects are going somewhere. Sometimes we use "à____". why is this different?"on naviguerait jusqu'en Martinique "Why jusqu'en?Thanks

Answer

As a preposition jusqu'en will indicate "as far as" and including .......

So "On naviguerait jusqu'en Martinique" would suggest "we could navigate as far as Martinique" with no suggestion of going beyond. Whereas "à Martinique" simply expresses the destination of Martinique. So it is a matter of expressing the intention of "up to and including" rather than simply "to".

Hope that this will help.

Alan (Jim)