"Your plate is on the table."

Translation: 你的盘子在桌子上。

[alessandrangela]

Why can't you say, '在 上 桌子'?

[ZhefeiLi]

When you put 上 in front of a noun, it often makes it a verb，i.e. 上床, 上船。When you want to use the word to mean on something, it goes after the noun.

[Cinnamon5230]

In modern Chinese, the proposition is always after the object. And here 上 means the proposition "on".

在 has two meanings. If it is followed by a verb, it is the continuous marker.
If it is followed by a prepositional phrase, it is the verb "locate".

So:

在桌子上 = locate (be) on the table

在上桌子 = getting upon the table (上, as a verb, means "get upon")

[KQin2]

In fact, in English it's "on the table", and "on" means 上，but here you can't think in a English way, in Chinese, prepositions are always put afterwards, so it's 在桌子上，you can use this kind of pattern"在……上", which means "on... ".

[LilacBunni]

In Chinese, the preposition is after the noun

[chetlin]

And therefore they are "postpositions"

[Oni]

上 in that position would be more like a verb, but is ungrammatical in this case anyway. As a location complement, always after the object!

[HartzFEAR1]

What is the different between 盘子 and 盘?

[mendosi]

盤子 like many nouns with only one character (比如: 椅子，桌子，房子，兒子/儿子，帽子，鬍子，杯子，叉子，筷子) is followed by 子, called the noun suffix, when the noun appears by itself.

I think it helps to resolve ambiguity inherent in speaking (none of those would be ambiguous when written).

Often when those same nouns appear in compounds the 子 is dropped.

[Erikku15]

I hear people in taiwan say it this way

[Bruce293408]

I answerd exactly as the error prompt and still got it "wrong"(?).