Preposition "a" or "al"?

Question

I know all the rules about how to form the articulated prepositions in Italian, so I don't have to understand how to construct them, but rather I have a doubt on when to use the simple and when to use the articulated one:> - Vado a scuola.> - Vado all'università.Why don't we say "alla scuola", but we use only the simple preposition? In what other cases does something like this happen?

Answer 1

The use of the prepositions is not always logic as we would like or would expect. Every language evolved and evolves based on how people feel, think in as specific period.

For example why we say I go home BUT I go to the cinema. The linguists have found all the possible "logic" answers and created the "grammar" in other cases it is not possible and the only possibility is go back in the centuries and study the evolution of certain words/prepositions in this case.

Other examples are: io vado in banca, io vado a scuola, in piscina in biblioteca, a casa....etc...

Language is not logic but only an extract of thousand of years of spoken culture. Hope this helps, ciao Carlo