How do you distinguish when to use prepositions?

Question

For example: en, con, de, a, or not at all.

Answer 1

In most languages, prepositions make basic references, such as spatial and possessive ones. Thus, "en" indicates location; "con" indicates togetherness, "de" indicates possession and classification and "a" indicates direction. Most of all other meanings for these prepositions have been created because of some metaphorical or metonymical extensions which one can understand with a bit of imagination.

But unfortunately, while understanding why speakers have extended cognitively the initial value of the prepositions after you are told how they are used, guessing how or when these changes took place is impossible all the time, so you need to end up memorising these uses. The same problem goes for English.

Answer 2

It is unfortunately very similar to English. There is a rather arbitrary association of verbs to specific prepositions that must be memorized. Here are some lists to help you get started:

link