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The reason we say "no smoking on the bus" instead of "in the bus" is all etymology.... People used to ride ON carriages and ON horses, on wagons... etc.. We have since started riding IN cars.. but people still use on for passenger transportation.
I have a professor who is a etymologist... studies the histories and origins of words. He is fluent in Russian, French, German, English, some Spanish.. etc etc etc. He will be talking and just stop, and break into a 5 minute trail off about where the word "thank" came from... or something entirely stranger.
A lot of the english language is West Germanic in orgin, brought to England by the Saxons and also latin elements from the romans who travelled north. Which ultimately is where most of the saxons mangled their language from. From there German became German and English became English, vowel sounds changed along with spellings...
and for all sorts of f-ed up reasons eventually leads to people saying that you cannot smoke on a bus.
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