Hi, home! I’m dad.
Solid.
Liquid.
Colloidal.
Emulsion.
Home is used differently than house. I’m home makes sense. I’m house doesn’t (which is your school and post office equivalent).
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.
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.
Hey what’s the difference between put and putt?
Putt is shorthand for “put and only put”.
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!
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
Dude, I am so post office.
It helps when you realize that home is an adverb in English.
Ah. You’re talking to a math grad.
For me it always just felt very close to “I am here” / “I am done” / “I am late” / “I am fine” — not as description of a place but state.
All the quirks, weirdnesses and exceptions are the best / most fun parts of any language. Close second, how it constantly evolves and where the words originated from.
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.
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?
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 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
Your instincts are right in that English as a second language is tricksy and annoying. The “I’m home” thing never occured to me, but there’s plenty of stumbling blocks. They’re, their, and there. Idioms like “piece of cake”. It’s a long list. Not the hardest of all languages to learn, but it is confusing in places.
My favorite confusing English sentence is “I have had too much to eat.”
- “Have had” is the same word twice, once in present tense, and again in past tense. It counts as one verb.
- Both “too” and “to” used.
- “Eat” is a noun.
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
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.
Most people are talking 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.
But more importantly, did you eat too much, or have you had too much and now you can’t eat?
That’s so true. Just avoid the awkwardness: I ate too much.
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.
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
Don’t British people say in hospital or something?
We do, yes :)
Can you think of any similar differences?
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.
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.
“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”.
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
