As I said in an earlier post, prepositions in French do not always correspond exactly to those in English. Two specific instances in French that are counterintuitive to English speakers are:
Je prends les jouets dans la boîte. I took the toys out of/from the box.
J'ai acheté la bicyclette à Jacques. I bought the bicycle from Jacques.
The way I made sense of these constructions as an English speaker is to try to get into the frame of mind of a French speaker. In the first example, I told myself that to get the toys I would need to put my hands inside the box and grab the toys while my hands were in there.
In the second example, I told myself I need to go to Jacques to buy the bicycle.
If you think about it, both the prepositions in English and French make sense in these instances based on how they are generally understood and used in the respective languages. The point is that we need to learn the logic behind how prepositions are used in French just as a French speaker would have to learn the logic behind how prepositions are used in English.
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