You're thinking in terms of location, rather than state-of-being. "I'm home" is your status.
"I'm driving, I am bored, I'm safe, I am away"... None of those sound weird, do they? This, combined with the more technical grammar rules others have commented...
Many times I'll walk in the door but need to log into work, and I'll say to my wife "I'm not home yet". As in, my external responsibilities are not completed and I am not available. When I'm available to my family or to relax, I have then become "home".
Edit: I meant adverb. It modified the state of being. Like being "away".
It’s because “home” in this formation is an adverb, whereas school is a noun. You can be an adverb- I’m surprised, I’m exhuasted… - but you must be at a noun (or on, or in, or some other preposition).
This is the adverb form. If it were an adjective, it would be nearer to the noun and not seperated by the verb like in "He stole home plate." "Home" is modifying the state of being or "am".
with the addition that most languages - especially romance languages - have irregular verbs and constructions.
e.g. in french you say "I have 30 years" to say you are 30 years old. in English you say "I am 30" to say you are 30 years old. It makes no sense to say you are the number 30 or you have 30 years. But no one really thinks about it.
I only realized that the more I studied other languages, making me reflect on English.
Like, English doesn't have a future tense. It seems like a pretty basic thing, but in English you say "I'm going to X". Why do you use the verb 'to go' there? Why is that the way English creates a future tense? If you're headed to the store now: I'm going to the store. If it's happening later: I'm going to go to the store. WTF is this bullshit? "going to go"? Just stop and think for a second about "going" and "go" in that phrase.
And the verb "to do", why is that part of questions in English? Statement: You have a dog. Question: Do you have a dog? What does "to do" have to do with any of that? Why is "doing" the verb that somehow is used to turn a statement into a question?
And then there's "to use". Using is to take, hold, deploy, consume... so why is it sometimes part of the past tense. Sure, you can say "I walked to school", but if you want to talk about habits or routines: "I used to walk to school". Why is "to use" even involved there at all?
That's not even accounting for spelling and pronunciation which is just ridiculous in English.
We have a letter 'k' that reliably makes a certain sound, and a letter 's' that reliably makes another sound. But, a huge variety of words use "c" which can make a 'k' sound like cat, or an 's' sound like city. The letter 'c' has no sound of its own, it's just a randomizer machine for one of the other useful sounds. The letter 'g' has one sound that no other letter makes, in words like "grip" and "great". There's another letter "j" that makes a different sound, like in "jet" and the name "Jim". But, for some reason, sometimes the "g" makes a "j" sound, so "Jim" and "gym" have the same sound but completely different spellings, leading to bullshit like the confusion over how to pronounce "gif".
English has roughly 20 vowel sounds, depending on the accent, but the vowel letters are 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', and sometimes 'y'. So, you'd think that at least those 5/6 are sorted and the other 20 come from combinations, right? Nope. In British English, for some reason "can" and "can't" get a different vowel sound for the 'a', despite "can't" being a contraction for "can not", which literally contains "can". The letter "u" can sound different between "put" and "putt", even though you're just tacking a 't' to the end of that combination of letters. If you tack an 's' on the end it doesn't change, but if you tack an 'e' on the end... whoa, an entirely new sound different from both "put" and "putt".
I'm glad the world is slowly converging on one language that allows everyone to communicate with everyone else, but it sucks that the language that came out on top is English.
I just want to point out that English's future tense does exist, but it's just non-distinct in many cases because, well, as you've said, English is fucked.
"We're eating steak."
You need context to determine whether this statement is talking about the present or the future. So much of the language is implied contextually that you can just drop off words and assume the listener will understand.
"What are we eating?" vs. "What are we eating tonight?"
It's so funny because whereas a lot of other languages have rules with defined exceptions here and there, speaking English is more of a theoretical approach.
It feels like English just happened one day and we're all trying to figure out why.
It's so funny because whereas a lot of other languages have rules with defined exceptions here and there, speaking English is more of a theoretical approach.
I feel like this also makes it useful in that you can butcher the hell out of it, and still communicate somewhat effectively. I don't feel that's the case in some other languages, or maybe I'm willing to put up with my colleague's broken English far more than they're willing to put up with my broken German/Spanish/etc.
I think English allows you more different ways of doing things than most other languages. The future tense being "going to X" and one of the past tenses being "used to X" means that new English learners don't need to spend as much time studying yet another verb tense.
OTOH, the spelling and pronunciation is such a massive hurdle compared to a simple language like Spanish.
Yeah, it's definitely convenient in most cases, I would say. Though it can also be inconvenient when messaging, because sometimes said need to add context can read very unnaturally in an otherwise grammatically correct sentence.
My uneducated guess is that England had so many colonies throughout history that a lot of languages affected English and we have this Frankenstein of a language
That's part of it, but I think a bigger part is all the countries that colonized the British Isles. English has elements of Germanic languages like German, Dutch, Old Norse, etc. It has elements of Latin languages from Latin itself to French. The British Empire definitely resulted in words being brought back from the various colonies, but the English they spoke then was fairly similar to what we know today. It was already this weird, bastardized Germanic / French language.
Future Simple / Simple Future: Will + [base form] -- I'll eat that later; or Going + [infinitive] -- I'm going to eat that later.
Future Continuous: Will be + [present participle] -- I'll be eating that later.
Future Perfect: Will have + [past participle] -- I'll have eaten that later.
Future Perfect Continuous: Will have been + [present participle] -- I'll have been eating that later.
There's also using the present continuous to talk about the future -- I'm eating that tomorrow.
Also, the simple present -- I eat that tomorrow.
English is flexible, but it's also weird. There are a lot of distinctions that matter to native English speakers but that are really hard to put into rules. Like "will" vs. "going to". They have slightly different meanings, but good luck coming up with an easy to understand rule about when to use each version.
Let's start with the fact that Danish is practically two languages in one - the written language and the spoken language. There is very little connection between the two. You cannot look at a word's spelling and know how it is pronounced, and often it is not pronounced how you would think it is pronounced by looking at the spelling.
The grammar is simple, but it's so full of irregularities that you basically need to memorise a wide array of words and phrases.
The spoken language has more vowel sounds than the alphabet has vowels, even when Danish has added three extra (æ, ø and å). Each vowel can therefore be pronounced in different ways depending on the word. No, there is no system to tell you which sound is the correct one, you just have to know and memorize it.
Add to this the fact that the pronounciation is quite complicated and basically impossible for foreigners to learn without having a heavy or at least moderate accent.
The spoken language has more vowel sounds than the alphabet has vowels, even when Danish has added three extra (æ, ø and å).
That's one thing I think English at least did right. Other languages added extra letters and/or diacritics to try to capture all the variations on vowel sounds. But, in most languages there are far more vowel sounds than there are vowels. So, don't make things unnecessarily complicated by adding extra letters. The one language that seems to do it basically right is Spanish, where there are only about 5 vowel sounds and they use the accent character not to show that a letter is pronounced differently, but just to cue you in on which syllable is accented when it might not be the one you expect. (With a few minor annoying variations, like el and él).
English at least has "going to" and "will" for future. In Estonian you just use present simple and the only way to know you're talking about the future is if you hint it with some time related word.
You just say "I go to the supermarket" and it's ambiguous. You say "I go to the supermarket tomorrow" and you know it's talking about the future.
Do you know if that's unique to Estonian, or also true of Finnish? AFAIK, Finnish (and Estonian) are a weird language branch in that most of Europe is Indo-European. Even distinct languages like Italian and German are more related to each-other than Finnish.
What does "going to" have to do with it? Do they need to spiritually travel to the motivation center of the brain before you go to the store? I'm just saying, if you say "going to go" over "will", you're gonna get tongue cramps, and for all intents and purposes, they mean the same thing. This is language that we're talking about. All words are made up, so just try to keep up and you will be fine.
The annoying thing is that "I'll go to work tomorrow" and "I'm going to go to work tomorrow" have subtly different meanings to English speakers, but good luck trying to come up with a rule to explain the difference to someone learning the language.
You know, that's a good example, you have a good point. In some contexts they are slightly different. I'll take a wack at describing the difference though: "I'll go to work tomorrow" sounds like making a decision out loud, in the moment, while "I'm going to go to work tomorrow" just sounds like communicating intentions, regardless of when the decision was made or whether they were the ones to make it. In this context "I'm going to go" can substitute "I'll go", but the reverse might sound weird. So I concede but only a little
It's not intuitive if you don't know several languages that some things in language are just how any human communicate, such as skipping words and stuff.
You're clearly fluent if you describe "tickling any resemblance" of an effect. Learners would likely say something akin to "make me confused" or similar or less.
That reminds me that my sixth grade teacher was adamant that 'I am going over Steve's house" meant that one was visiting the house, not flying over it.
I would sure appreciate that explanation. Like I broadly get that 'at' implies you are present with the person's knowledge while 'in' implies you are there without their knowledge but I would like an explanation of why the meanings are implied as such
Because home isn't a normal location, it's "home".
It's where you're from.
Like, no one says "I'm house" or "I'm apartment building" because it's not about the physical structure. It's about being where the heart is. How many pillows do Grandmas need to stitch that on?
"I had too much to eat" would be past tense, meaning you ate too much, say, last week
"I have too much to eat" is future tense, meaning you went to the buffet and got carried away, now you've got a massive plate of chicken in front of you
So "I have (right at this moment) had (just ingested) too much to eat (and now I'm farting a lot)
Also, in this case "to eat" isn't a noun, it's the infinitive verb
Most people are talking about the infinitive case for "eat", but I'd like to point out the verb, "have had", is the present perfect case. Still confusing and still agree with your simplification of "I ate too much". But there's still a meaningful difference between the two sentences.
Yes it does. I think it's that way because it's in locative case even though it doesn't make the word itself look any different. English sort of has cases and doesn't.
It works similarly in Latin. You don't say ad domum. You only say domum.
Is it truly an adverb, though. Would that statement be considered proper English? It is a colloquialism, or some might say a metaphor, but is it considered an appropriate use of the English language to use that type of phrase? I could just imagine someone’s English professor returning an essay with a red line through that phrase.
No, the way people say it makes it obvious that it's a set phrase. Like in Japanese they say "tadaima" and people reply "okaeri" and you just know that it's a thing and don't question it much. It's until much later when people point it out that you go, ohh yeahhh.
In Hungarian it's the same with "home" in particular. You say "I'm home.". In Hungarian, I too say the exact same thing: "Otthon vagyok" (I'm home).
Your other two example works the same, you won't say in Hungarian "I'm school" (Iskola vagyok (it means I am literally a school)). But you say "IskoláBAN vagyok" (I'm at school) or "PostÁN vagyok" (I'm at the post office. Notice the suffix in this case is completely different, but that's another story of Hungarian)
okay, so this means the word 'home' is actually special accross languages 😆.
and not neccessairly the home as homeland like haza in hungarian ('cause that's not even a noun (tho it is somewhat equivalent with home)), home like... your home.
What do you think of the Irish language? lol. Ouisce is ishkah is water, and that’s probably the only word that is spelled closest to how it’s pronounced. I’m just glad the bus lane is labeled “Lana bus”. I figured that one out just before stepping off the curb.
The problem is that Gaeilge (Gaelic) is the national language and it would simply cost twice the amount to paint Bus Lane underneath Lána Bus and the Irish government is cheap af just like most governments. And lazy.
honestly I never even noticed that. But I did learn English like a native would - through near total immersion, and mainly monolingually instead of through translation. Whenever I learnt something new I was just like "alright so that's how I say the thing".
To be perfectly honest, if your language teacher points out that "I'm home" is a unique case I'd say that's a bad move, because now you'll second guess yourself every time you want to say it & might make mistakes you otherwise wouldn't.
This goes for all linguistic quirks imo, so many "watch carefully for those little bits" that instead of helping you learn they make you confused. Imagine learning about through thought though taught tough throughout thorough all in one day because "they're all very similar but very different! we put them all in the same spot to make sure you don't get them confused :)" it's a mental cluster fuck trying to remember which is which when you have all of them in one spot, the way to learn them is to have examples of their uses scattered across the ciriculum so that when you encounter one you can commit it to memory before you see the next one
It's not amazing for anyone to understand if you leave out an unnecessary word. It happens in all languages, even those not connected to civilization at large because humans intuitively understand. You don't need to explain how you immerse yourself in language or anything, it's impossible to misunderstand the omission of an unnecessary word
I simply gave context to how I learn English, nowhere did I say that it's amazing that I understood an omission of a word, in fact I said that I never noticed how it was omitted until it was pointed out. What are you on about?
I remember a Vietnamese co-worker commenting that sometimes people say "Here you go" and sometimes they say "Here you are" when handing her things and wondered if there was a difference. I explained it was just two ways to say the same thing.
It wouldn't surprise me if this subject-dropping was introduced into English by non-native speakers? English is actually a bit peculiar as languages go in its wanting to put a subject in practically every sentence. It's raining. It's about time. What is the "it" here referring to? Linguists will tell you you're looking at a subject placeholder that doesn't convey any special meaning but simply completes the grammar. And people learning English from other languages that don't need this fail to see the point. So they just start saying "About time we dropped that stupid it!" and then even native speakers start thinking yeah, why not ditch the subject if we don't really need it?
It's a thing that happens in most languages that create rules about sentence structure.
Basically, really important or frequently used statements will break the rules to... Save time.
Can you imagine that scene from scene from half bake, instead of "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you, I'm out!"
You'd get "I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I think that you are cool, I will fuck you, I will leave now."
Something like 'Im going to the store' only becomes 'going to the store!' in contexts of urgency and familiarity, like yelling it on the way out the door to your spouse. You wouldn't likely do that in your workplace.
Yeah, one context in which a subject is not required even with proper English grammar is in imperatives, which makes sense given the implied urgency. If "Watch out!" had to be something more long-winded like "You must watch out!" you'd probably be dead.
The top two are not too far out, the Spanish is similar - "you I love" "see us". Be right back is so weird in English but funnier in Spanish, ya vuelvo, sounds like "I am already back"
Can't speak of other languages, but in German anyway the sentence is exactly the same. "Ich bin zuhause" meaning word-for-word "I am home". Same issue, normally a location would have a preposition and an article. Reasoning is also the same as in english, "home" and "zuhause" are not a location but a state in this case.
Yes, "home" and "zuhause" mean the same thing but they aren't exactly the same, zuhause is a compound word. English also has compound words, for example "aboard" and "abed". The English word isn't "ahouse"; it is simply "home".
True. I was more going on the idea of OP that it must confuse english learners. I often feel people who only know one language tend to forget that most latin languages tend to have similar quirks, often making such quirks in a foreign language rather natural.
In this case, it's nothing to do with Latin. German is not a Latin language, and old (pre-Norman) English is closer to German than anything else. It's the shared Germanic heritage which gives us this quirk.
Absolutely. The fundamental thing about the rules of grammar is that they're more like guidelines. In fact, I think OP's example is hardly the most confusing or inconsistent thing in English, which is not to say that the question isn't a really good one. The quirks, similarities and differences are one thing that makes language-learning really interesting.
Not really, German here:
"Ich bin zuhaus(e)" -> "I'm home"
"Ich bin in der Bäckerei", "Ich bin bei der Post", "Ich bin bei den Großeltern" -> "I'm at the bakery", I'm at the post office", "I'm at my grandparents place I'm at my grandparents" (or "I'm with my grandparents")
One of my favourites to think about is "How are you?". Taken literally that question makes no sense. "How are you?" "Well one day my parents had sex and I sort of grew from there...."
Every language has some set of rules to how your supposed to construct sentences. Every language has a ton of exceptions to those rules.
The main thing that makes English difficult is that it's a kind of hybrid language. It's in the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages but it borrows a ton of words from the Romance branch. The grammar is also a weird hybrid (for example we preserve grammatical gender in pronouns, like in German, but we've mostly dropped grammatical gender in nouns and articles, like in Chinese.
This is one of the simpler types of exceptions.
Consider the Chinese phrase: 好久不见
Litterally: "good time not see"
But then someone explains that while 好 normally means "good" it can also mean "quite" or "alot".
So it's fairly easy to remember that it's generally translated as, "long time no see".
Those steps are pretty simple for a Chinese learner to understand. It's also not the hard part of learning a language.
Absolutely. I'm an ESL teacher in Korea, and getting my students to use prepositions properly is a significant portion of my job. The difference between something like "He is coming to you." and "He is coming for you." isn't obvious at all if you think about it, but there are definitely proper and improper use cases for them.
Great read, thanks a lot 👍
#1 : "I feel like fish" 🤣
#14 : ″‘Tough,’ ‘through,’ ‘thorough,’ ‘thought,’ ‘though,’ ‘trough’ 🤔
#29 : “The way you have to order adjectives (...) : opinion-size-shape-color-origin-material-purpose noun.” - - Today I learned ! ... but this one is too difficult, so, I won't even ever try to apply it.
Similar irregularities exist in Standard German (e.g. "Ich steige Stefansplatz aus", "I get off [at] Stefansplatz", when say driving the bus), and there's a whole sociolect that regularises it to also say "I'm going school". And, no, the "that noun is an adjective now" explanation doesn't really work in German.
Understanding those kinds of (usually informal) uses is trivial if you know the language, it's using them like a native that's difficult. Forget studying grammar they need to be learned by osmosis. Grammars linguists produce, even highly detailed ones, have a very hard time capturing the possibilities, what's acceptable when playing around with the language.
There’s a song with the lyric “If you need us we’ll be backyard in our new tree fort” and it fucks with me that it sounds as okay as it does. Reckon it makes a little more sense when the place-word includes a relative direction, like in “upstairs” or “courtside”.
I have heard some gems in the wild though, like “Ima go run bathroom”.
You're thinking in terms of location, rather than state-of-being. "I'm home" is your status.
"I'm driving, I am bored, I'm safe, I am away"... None of those sound weird, do they? This, combined with the more technical grammar rules others have commented...
I can be at home, but it's not until I'm in comfy pants, on the couch, with a drink in hand that I'm home
Home is the adjective. It's a state of being.
Many times I'll walk in the door but need to log into work, and I'll say to my wife "I'm not home yet". As in, my external responsibilities are not completed and I am not available. When I'm available to my family or to relax, I have then become "home".
Edit: I meant adverb. It modified the state of being. Like being "away".
Hi, home! I'm dad.
Solid.
Liquid.
Colloidal.
Emulsion.
It’s because “home” in this formation is an adverb, whereas school is a noun. You can be an adverb- I’m surprised, I’m exhuasted… - but you must be at a noun (or on, or in, or some other preposition).
Ironically students of foreign language often cling to these grammatical structures and are less confused by the same word in different contexts.
You mean adjective, right? Adverb describes the verb, like talking "loudly" or "quietly"
This is the adverb form. If it were an adjective, it would be nearer to the noun and not seperated by the verb like in "He stole home plate." "Home" is modifying the state of being or "am".
with the addition that most languages - especially romance languages - have irregular verbs and constructions.
e.g. in french you say "I have 30 years" to say you are 30 years old. in English you say "I am 30" to say you are 30 years old. It makes no sense to say you are the number 30 or you have 30 years. But no one really thinks about it.
"I am 30" makes sense because it's a shortened form of "I am 30 years old".
They likely meant to say "adverbial phrase."
Home is used differently than house. I'm home makes sense. I'm house doesn't (which is your school and post office equivalent).
Also, I feel at home but I don't feel at house.
Dr House would like a word with you
"He hates talking to patients"
It helps when you realize that home is an adverb in English.
Ah. You’re talking to a math grad.
In this usage, "home" is an adverb / adverbial! It is a preposition being used adverbially.
I'm going in. I'm going home.
Send it out. Send it home.
Run away! Run home!
All languages have quirks, but English is awful.
I only realized that the more I studied other languages, making me reflect on English.
Like, English doesn't have a future tense. It seems like a pretty basic thing, but in English you say "I'm going to X". Why do you use the verb 'to go' there? Why is that the way English creates a future tense? If you're headed to the store now: I'm going to the store. If it's happening later: I'm going to go to the store. WTF is this bullshit? "going to go"? Just stop and think for a second about "going" and "go" in that phrase.
And the verb "to do", why is that part of questions in English? Statement: You have a dog. Question: Do you have a dog? What does "to do" have to do with any of that? Why is "doing" the verb that somehow is used to turn a statement into a question?
And then there's "to use". Using is to take, hold, deploy, consume... so why is it sometimes part of the past tense. Sure, you can say "I walked to school", but if you want to talk about habits or routines: "I used to walk to school". Why is "to use" even involved there at all?
That's not even accounting for spelling and pronunciation which is just ridiculous in English.
We have a letter 'k' that reliably makes a certain sound, and a letter 's' that reliably makes another sound. But, a huge variety of words use "c" which can make a 'k' sound like cat, or an 's' sound like city. The letter 'c' has no sound of its own, it's just a randomizer machine for one of the other useful sounds. The letter 'g' has one sound that no other letter makes, in words like "grip" and "great". There's another letter "j" that makes a different sound, like in "jet" and the name "Jim". But, for some reason, sometimes the "g" makes a "j" sound, so "Jim" and "gym" have the same sound but completely different spellings, leading to bullshit like the confusion over how to pronounce "gif".
English has roughly 20 vowel sounds, depending on the accent, but the vowel letters are 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', and sometimes 'y'. So, you'd think that at least those 5/6 are sorted and the other 20 come from combinations, right? Nope. In British English, for some reason "can" and "can't" get a different vowel sound for the 'a', despite "can't" being a contraction for "can not", which literally contains "can". The letter "u" can sound different between "put" and "putt", even though you're just tacking a 't' to the end of that combination of letters. If you tack an 's' on the end it doesn't change, but if you tack an 'e' on the end... whoa, an entirely new sound different from both "put" and "putt".
I'm glad the world is slowly converging on one language that allows everyone to communicate with everyone else, but it sucks that the language that came out on top is English.
I just want to point out that English's future tense does exist, but it's just non-distinct in many cases because, well, as you've said, English is fucked.
You need context to determine whether this statement is talking about the present or the future. So much of the language is implied contextually that you can just drop off words and assume the listener will understand.
It's so funny because whereas a lot of other languages have rules with defined exceptions here and there, speaking English is more of a theoretical approach.
It feels like English just happened one day and we're all trying to figure out why.
I feel like this also makes it useful in that you can butcher the hell out of it, and still communicate somewhat effectively. I don't feel that's the case in some other languages, or maybe I'm willing to put up with my colleague's broken English far more than they're willing to put up with my broken German/Spanish/etc.
I think English allows you more different ways of doing things than most other languages. The future tense being "going to X" and one of the past tenses being "used to X" means that new English learners don't need to spend as much time studying yet another verb tense.
OTOH, the spelling and pronunciation is such a massive hurdle compared to a simple language like Spanish.
Yeah, it's definitely convenient in most cases, I would say. Though it can also be inconvenient when messaging, because sometimes said need to add context can read very unnaturally in an otherwise grammatically correct sentence.
My uneducated guess is that England had so many colonies throughout history that a lot of languages affected English and we have this Frankenstein of a language
That's part of it, but I think a bigger part is all the countries that colonized the British Isles. English has elements of Germanic languages like German, Dutch, Old Norse, etc. It has elements of Latin languages from Latin itself to French. The British Empire definitely resulted in words being brought back from the various colonies, but the English they spoke then was fairly similar to what we know today. It was already this weird, bastardized Germanic / French language.
There are various future tenses.
Future Simple / Simple Future: Will + [base form] -- I'll eat that later; or Going + [infinitive] -- I'm going to eat that later.
Future Continuous: Will be + [present participle] -- I'll be eating that later.
Future Perfect: Will have + [past participle] -- I'll have eaten that later.
Future Perfect Continuous: Will have been + [present participle] -- I'll have been eating that later.
There's also using the present continuous to talk about the future -- I'm eating that tomorrow.
Also, the simple present -- I eat that tomorrow.
English is flexible, but it's also weird. There are a lot of distinctions that matter to native English speakers but that are really hard to put into rules. Like "will" vs. "going to". They have slightly different meanings, but good luck coming up with an easy to understand rule about when to use each version.
As a dane, you have no idea how good you have it. Be happy that English became the lingua franca and not something worse.
What are some of the issues with Danish?
There's so many it's hard to think of them all.
Let's start with the fact that Danish is practically two languages in one - the written language and the spoken language. There is very little connection between the two. You cannot look at a word's spelling and know how it is pronounced, and often it is not pronounced how you would think it is pronounced by looking at the spelling.
The grammar is simple, but it's so full of irregularities that you basically need to memorise a wide array of words and phrases.
The spoken language has more vowel sounds than the alphabet has vowels, even when Danish has added three extra (æ, ø and å). Each vowel can therefore be pronounced in different ways depending on the word. No, there is no system to tell you which sound is the correct one, you just have to know and memorize it.
Add to this the fact that the pronounciation is quite complicated and basically impossible for foreigners to learn without having a heavy or at least moderate accent.
That's one thing I think English at least did right. Other languages added extra letters and/or diacritics to try to capture all the variations on vowel sounds. But, in most languages there are far more vowel sounds than there are vowels. So, don't make things unnecessarily complicated by adding extra letters. The one language that seems to do it basically right is Spanish, where there are only about 5 vowel sounds and they use the accent character not to show that a letter is pronounced differently, but just to cue you in on which syllable is accented when it might not be the one you expect. (With a few minor annoying variations, like el and él).
English at least has "going to" and "will" for future. In Estonian you just use present simple and the only way to know you're talking about the future is if you hint it with some time related word.
You just say "I go to the supermarket" and it's ambiguous. You say "I go to the supermarket tomorrow" and you know it's talking about the future.
Do you know if that's unique to Estonian, or also true of Finnish? AFAIK, Finnish (and Estonian) are a weird language branch in that most of Europe is Indo-European. Even distinct languages like Italian and German are more related to each-other than Finnish.
It's the same way in Finnish.
I used grammatically incorrect examples on purpose to point out there's no present simple vs present continuous distinction in Estonian either.
I will go to the store?
What does willpower have to do with it?
What does "going to" have to do with it? Do they need to spiritually travel to the motivation center of the brain before you go to the store? I'm just saying, if you say "going to go" over "will", you're gonna get tongue cramps, and for all intents and purposes, they mean the same thing. This is language that we're talking about. All words are made up, so just try to keep up and you will be fine.
The annoying thing is that "I'll go to work tomorrow" and "I'm going to go to work tomorrow" have subtly different meanings to English speakers, but good luck trying to come up with a rule to explain the difference to someone learning the language.
You know, that's a good example, you have a good point. In some contexts they are slightly different. I'll take a wack at describing the difference though: "I'll go to work tomorrow" sounds like making a decision out loud, in the moment, while "I'm going to go to work tomorrow" just sounds like communicating intentions, regardless of when the decision was made or whether they were the ones to make it. In this context "I'm going to go" can substitute "I'll go", but the reverse might sound weird. So I concede but only a little
Hey what's the difference between put and putt?
Putt is shorthand for "put and only put".
Verbose HTTP is looking great.
As opposed to "put and do something else"?
No get! Only put
Phonetically, put: /pʊt/ vs. putt: /pʌt/
ʊ is the sound from words like "book", "hook", "pull" or "should.
ʌ is the sound from words like "gut", "double", "butter", "luck", etc.
Thanks! Yes it's weird. Cut and put sound tutally different wile cut and putt are pronounced the same
Put is something you do to something (I will put this down), putt is a technique in golf (watch me land this putt).
Thanks!
Dude, I am so post office.
That one genuinely made me laugh out loud; thanks, haha.
No, actually it's not even tickling any resemblance of confusion
The concept of multiple languages seems to confuse so many monolinguists.
It's not intuitive if you don't know several languages that some things in language are just how any human communicate, such as skipping words and stuff.
You're clearly fluent if you describe "tickling any resemblance" of an effect. Learners would likely say something akin to "make me confused" or similar or less.
Maybe, I don't know what counts as fluent. But I am learning
Same
This is it exactly. "I am at home" describes your location. "I am home" describes your current state.
I had to explain to a friend recently why
"I'm at Steve's house"
Was fine but
"I'm in Steve's house"
Was weird. Like, get out of there before you get arrested.
That reminds me that my sixth grade teacher was adamant that 'I am going over Steve's house" meant that one was visiting the house, not flying over it.
I like learning french because it shows me how weird the connections to english are.
"Chez Steve" means "At Steve's [place]". This one is more verbose in english.
But you can say "chez moi" for "at home". And no need to specify which home.
How many homes do you have?
That's exactly my point.
I'm at Steve's house.
I'm in Steve's backyard.
I'm at Steve's backyard barbecue.
Yeah, English is pretty f'd up.
Nah, this kinda does make sense. You wouldn't wanna be inside Steve's barbecue, would you?
I would sure appreciate that explanation. Like I broadly get that 'at' implies you are present with the person's knowledge while 'in' implies you are there without their knowledge but I would like an explanation of why the meanings are implied as such
"I'm out of soap"
Well duh, you wouldn't even fit inside one.
Do I fill in or fill out this form?
Who is your soap guy? Your soap is too small.
Because home isn't a normal location, it's "home".
It's where you're from.
Like, no one says "I'm house" or "I'm apartment building" because it's not about the physical structure. It's about being where the heart is. How many pillows do Grandmas need to stitch that on?
Adnoun
"I am House." - Some TV doctor
Some people called Romans, they go the house?
Romanes eunt domus!
My favorite confusing English sentence is "I have had too much to eat."
Think of it this way - it's "have had" because
"I had too much to eat" would be past tense, meaning you ate too much, say, last week
"I have too much to eat" is future tense, meaning you went to the buffet and got carried away, now you've got a massive plate of chicken in front of you
So "I have (right at this moment) had (just ingested) too much to eat (and now I'm farting a lot)
Also, in this case "to eat" isn't a noun, it's the infinitive verb
Technically "to eat" is the Infinitive form of the verb, and using infinitives as nouns isn't all that unusual in many languages.
To eat, is a verb but taking in the role of a noun.
Reminded me of this sentence:
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.
Explanation.
Most people are talking about the infinitive case for "eat", but I'd like to point out the verb, "have had", is the present perfect case. Still confusing and still agree with your simplification of "I ate too much". But there's still a meaningful difference between the two sentences.
That’s so true. Just avoid the awkwardness: I ate too much.
Also sounds much less awkward if you contract I have. For Example: I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane.
But more importantly, did you eat too much, or have you had too much and now you can't eat?
I don't think eat is a noun here, but the grammar is weird isn't it? Is the food the implicit object of the sentence? I need to study more.
Yes it does. I think it's that way because it's in locative case even though it doesn't make the word itself look any different. English sort of has cases and doesn't.
It works similarly in Latin. You don't say ad domum. You only say domum.
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Don't British people say in hospital or something?
We do, yes :)
Can you think of any similar differences?
"In hospice?" Which I've heard here, too and just refers to the type of care they receive.
We have that here too. I found what I was referring to:
I want to add Canadian English goes with the latter too.
Until you realize that home is also an adverb. Just to, y'know, drive home the point
Is it truly an adverb, though. Would that statement be considered proper English? It is a colloquialism, or some might say a metaphor, but is it considered an appropriate use of the English language to use that type of phrase? I could just imagine someone’s English professor returning an essay with a red line through that phrase.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/home
Home is a noun, adverb, adjective, and a verb. Yes the statement is proper English.
It's not any of what you said. It's an adv. according to many a dictionary. I doubt that any of my pals would call that wrong or anti–English class.
(From today on, I aim to not say the fifthglyph for all 2nd posts to promote ![email protected])
No, the way people say it makes it obvious that it's a set phrase. Like in Japanese they say "tadaima" and people reply "okaeri" and you just know that it's a thing and don't question it much. It's until much later when people point it out that you go, ohh yeahhh.
In Hungarian it's the same with "home" in particular. You say "I'm home.". In Hungarian, I too say the exact same thing: "Otthon vagyok" (I'm home).
Your other two example works the same, you won't say in Hungarian "I'm school" (Iskola vagyok (it means I am literally a school)). But you say "IskoláBAN vagyok" (I'm at school) or "PostÁN vagyok" (I'm at the post office. Notice the suffix in this case is completely different, but that's another story of Hungarian)
Yup, probably something that is the same in many languages though I can only speculate. It's also the same in swedish any way.
Can confirm for German ("das Zuhause" - "ich bin Zuhause")
Confirming for Romanian:
Home is probably special :)
okay, so this means the word 'home' is actually special accross languages 😆.
and not neccessairly the home as homeland like haza in hungarian ('cause that's not even a noun (tho it is somewhat equivalent with home)), home like... your home.
In Hungarian it comes from literally combining "ott" (there) + "honn"/"ház" (house/home). "itthon" is the same way except with "itt" (here).
Yeah, though I was like this is some behind the scenes or dvd extras material for this thread :P
When was the meeting where we decided not to say "I'm post office" because I use that phrase daily?
I used to be pre office. I still am, but now I'm post office too.
English is weird tbh
What do you think of the Irish language? lol. Ouisce is ishkah is water, and that’s probably the only word that is spelled closest to how it’s pronounced. I’m just glad the bus lane is labeled “Lana bus”. I figured that one out just before stepping off the curb.
Hahaha, fair.
Though, according to Statutory Instrument 113/1993, the Irish and English markings can be used on their own, or in conjunction with each other:
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1993/en/si/0113.html
The problem is that Gaeilge (Gaelic) is the national language and it would simply cost twice the amount to paint Bus Lane underneath Lána Bus and the Irish government is cheap af just like most governments. And lazy.
honestly I never even noticed that. But I did learn English like a native would - through near total immersion, and mainly monolingually instead of through translation. Whenever I learnt something new I was just like "alright so that's how I say the thing".
To be perfectly honest, if your language teacher points out that "I'm home" is a unique case I'd say that's a bad move, because now you'll second guess yourself every time you want to say it & might make mistakes you otherwise wouldn't.
This goes for all linguistic quirks imo, so many "watch carefully for those little bits" that instead of helping you learn they make you confused. Imagine learning about through thought though taught tough throughout thorough all in one day because "they're all very similar but very different! we put them all in the same spot to make sure you don't get them confused :)" it's a mental cluster fuck trying to remember which is which when you have all of them in one spot, the way to learn them is to have examples of their uses scattered across the ciriculum so that when you encounter one you can commit it to memory before you see the next one
It's not amazing that you understand the omission of an unnecessary word
where did i say it was?
It's not amazing for anyone to understand if you leave out an unnecessary word. It happens in all languages, even those not connected to civilization at large because humans intuitively understand. You don't need to explain how you immerse yourself in language or anything, it's impossible to misunderstand the omission of an unnecessary word
I simply gave context to how I learn English, nowhere did I say that it's amazing that I understood an omission of a word, in fact I said that I never noticed how it was omitted until it was pointed out. What are you on about?
I am telling you something Why are you so defensive? You're entire argument implies that it is interesting that omitting a word can be understood
You misunderstood what I wrote and are arguing with me about something I didn't say, you made up that implication yourself
What did I misunderstand?
I remember a Vietnamese co-worker commenting that sometimes people say "Here you go" and sometimes they say "Here you are" when handing her things and wondered if there was a difference. I explained it was just two ways to say the same thing.
"I'm home" is also something say when they arrive in their birth country or birth city/village. It's different from "I'm at home".
I am back.
I am home.
I am out.
I am office. 🤔
adverb
adverb
adverb
noun
This happens a lot in English. Probably other languages too.
"Love you."
"See ya."
"Be right back."
And more!
It wouldn't surprise me if this subject-dropping was introduced into English by non-native speakers? English is actually a bit peculiar as languages go in its wanting to put a subject in practically every sentence. It's raining. It's about time. What is the "it" here referring to? Linguists will tell you you're looking at a subject placeholder that doesn't convey any special meaning but simply completes the grammar. And people learning English from other languages that don't need this fail to see the point. So they just start saying "About time we dropped that stupid it!" and then even native speakers start thinking yeah, why not ditch the subject if we don't really need it?
It's a thing that happens in most languages that create rules about sentence structure.
Basically, really important or frequently used statements will break the rules to... Save time.
Can you imagine that scene from scene from half bake, instead of "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you, I'm out!"
You'd get "I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I think that you are cool, I will fuck you, I will leave now."
Something like 'Im going to the store' only becomes 'going to the store!' in contexts of urgency and familiarity, like yelling it on the way out the door to your spouse. You wouldn't likely do that in your workplace.
https://youtube.com/shorts/5CceU7oR22s
This kids great if you like language nonsense.
I always thought that "Fuck you" was a command ("You fuck you").
It is, it means "Fuck yourself".
Yeah, one context in which a subject is not required even with proper English grammar is in imperatives, which makes sense given the implied urgency. If "Watch out!" had to be something more long-winded like "You must watch out!" you'd probably be dead.
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Te amo.
Nos vemos.
The top two are not too far out, the Spanish is similar - "you I love" "see us". Be right back is so weird in English but funnier in Spanish, ya vuelvo, sounds like "I am already back"
Can't speak of other languages, but in German anyway the sentence is exactly the same. "Ich bin zuhause" meaning word-for-word "I am home". Same issue, normally a location would have a preposition and an article. Reasoning is also the same as in english, "home" and "zuhause" are not a location but a state in this case.
Yes, "home" and "zuhause" mean the same thing but they aren't exactly the same, zuhause is a compound word. English also has compound words, for example "aboard" and "abed". The English word isn't "ahouse"; it is simply "home".
True. I was more going on the idea of OP that it must confuse english learners. I often feel people who only know one language tend to forget that most latin languages tend to have similar quirks, often making such quirks in a foreign language rather natural.
In this case, it's nothing to do with Latin. German is not a Latin language, and old (pre-Norman) English is closer to German than anything else. It's the shared Germanic heritage which gives us this quirk.
Absolutely. The fundamental thing about the rules of grammar is that they're more like guidelines. In fact, I think OP's example is hardly the most confusing or inconsistent thing in English, which is not to say that the question isn't a really good one. The quirks, similarities and differences are one thing that makes language-learning really interesting.
"Ahouse" sounds so much like an actual archaic word, but I can't find evidence it was.
Neh, being home is also a state of mind
An old I Love Lucy episode comes to mind, it's got to be tough! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZV40f0cXF4
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Not really, German here:
"Ich bin zuhaus(e)" -> "I'm home"
"Ich bin in der Bäckerei", "Ich bin bei der Post", "Ich bin bei den Großeltern" -> "I'm at the bakery", I'm at the post office", "
I'm at my grandparents placeI'm at my grandparents" (or "I'm with my grandparents")Small correction:
"Ich bin bei den Großeltern" → "I'm at my grandparents (or grandparents’)"
"I'm at my grandparents’ place" only exist as "I'm at my grandparents‘ house" → "Ich bin im Haus meiner Großeltern"
Thank you.
Edited the comment :)
Home is a state of being in addition to a location.
Well, tell them that home is more than just a location.
If home is where your heart is, and I have my honey's heart, then saying "Honey, I'm home!" makes perfect sense.
Honey, I am at home!
I'M A BUS.
I read that it in Ralph Wiggums voice.
Also "going to 'ospitol"
One of my favourites to think about is "How are you?". Taken literally that question makes no sense. "How are you?" "Well one day my parents had sex and I sort of grew from there...."
Only a little.
Every language has some set of rules to how your supposed to construct sentences. Every language has a ton of exceptions to those rules.
The main thing that makes English difficult is that it's a kind of hybrid language. It's in the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages but it borrows a ton of words from the Romance branch. The grammar is also a weird hybrid (for example we preserve grammatical gender in pronouns, like in German, but we've mostly dropped grammatical gender in nouns and articles, like in Chinese.
This is one of the simpler types of exceptions.
Consider the Chinese phrase: 好久不见 Litterally: "good time not see" But then someone explains that while 好 normally means "good" it can also mean "quite" or "alot".
So it's fairly easy to remember that it's generally translated as, "long time no see".
Those steps are pretty simple for a Chinese learner to understand. It's also not the hard part of learning a language.
I'm the law!
Absolutely. I'm an ESL teacher in Korea, and getting my students to use prepositions properly is a significant portion of my job. The difference between something like "He is coming to you." and "He is coming for you." isn't obvious at all if you think about it, but there are definitely proper and improper use cases for them.
This is a fun little bit of fluff on this subject- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/35-confusing-things-about-the-english-language_n_5b39b246e4b08c3a8f6b9a3b
Great read, thanks a lot 👍
#1 : "I feel like fish" 🤣
#14 : ″‘Tough,’ ‘through,’ ‘thorough,’ ‘thought,’ ‘though,’ ‘trough’ 🤔
#29 : “The way you have to order adjectives (...) : opinion-size-shape-color-origin-material-purpose noun.” - - Today I learned ! ... but this one is too difficult, so, I won't even ever try to apply it.
Similar irregularities exist in Standard German (e.g. "Ich steige Stefansplatz aus", "I get off [at] Stefansplatz", when say driving the bus), and there's a whole sociolect that regularises it to also say "I'm going school". And, no, the "that noun is an adjective now" explanation doesn't really work in German.
Understanding those kinds of (usually informal) uses is trivial if you know the language, it's using them like a native that's difficult. Forget studying grammar they need to be learned by osmosis. Grammars linguists produce, even highly detailed ones, have a very hard time capturing the possibilities, what's acceptable when playing around with the language.
I'm domicile and I will not be harassed
I am away?
There’s a song with the lyric “If you need us we’ll be backyard in our new tree fort” and it fucks with me that it sounds as okay as it does. Reckon it makes a little more sense when the place-word includes a relative direction, like in “upstairs” or “courtside”.
I have heard some gems in the wild though, like “Ima go run bathroom”.
Well, backyards are usually at the back of the house, so I figure that's why it feels natural.