(neri, i hope you don't mind my hijacking; if you do (which I'd get because the hook is a "mistake" you made), please let me know and I'll create a separate post unconnected to you. please feel free to be honest, your feelings matter!)
I love when someone learning German makes me think about a word in a way i never have before!
today i realized that "bevorzugen" doesn't allow for a relation to be named (in a non-clumsy way)
in English you can say "i prefer X to/over/rather than Y" but in German, with the word "etw. bevorzugen" you only get to say "i prefer X" and the alternative (the thing you don't like as much) has to be inferred
Example sentence from a newspaper below:
Thus the example above, "Er bevorzugt in morgen arbeiten als abend" (also: am Morgen & am Abend OR morgens & abends), doesn't work nicely. You can only say "Er bevorzugt es, morgens zu arbeiten" and the alternative (working in the evening) has to be inferred
⭐ How can I mention the alternative?
One might think they could say "im Gegensatz zu Y" (basically: as opposed to Y) but that then communicates that a person's preference is different to sb. else's (Im Gegensatz zu dir, präferiere ich Honig - Unlike you, I prefer honey)
Right now I can't think of a straightforward way (like in English) to name the alternative, but from other examples one can see that the alternative is often mentioned beforehand (still not as explicit as in English though!):
3: they prefer candidates from RLP over ones from Franken (see the "fränkische Weinbauernverband" being upset)
5: he prefers men over women (whom he does like but evidently not as much as men)
The dictionary dict.cc does suggest that bevorzugen can be used with two arguments:
"X (Akk) Y (Dat) bevorzugen", the preference being named first (direct object)
I'm not so sure I agree: das Buch (akk) dem Film (dat) bevorzugen (to prefer the book to the movie) does NOT sound grammatically correct, it does work with "vorziehen" (see in the screenshot above) though - das Buch dem Film vorziehen - so I wonder if someone just generalized on accident/without noticing
⭐Explicit and common solution:
to explicitly compare two things and express a preference, we usually say "X lieber mögen als Y" (kind of: to like X more than Y)
3: Eriksson prefers women over trophies/likes women more than trophies
4: he doesn't prefer anything over tea and TV after a long day of work ("nichts lieber mögen als" as a common phrase btw!)
5: they prefer meeting Chris' family over the graduation party (which they are skipping - "sausen lassen")
Last point: "lieber mögen" probably works most times but is also sometimes exchanged for [adjective]+finden to be more specific, for example with "wichtiger finden" (to be seen as more important), "schöner finden" (to be seen as more beautiful/nice) etc
