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’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”.
Also “going to 'ospitol”
An old I Love Lucy episode comes to mind, it’s got to be tough! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZV40f0cXF4
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=uZV40f0cXF4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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:
- house = casă
- home = acasă
- i’m home = sunt acasă
- i’m at school = sunt la şcoală
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
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”
They likely meant to say “adverbial phrase.”
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”.
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.
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 used differently than house. I’m home makes sense. I’m house doesn’t (which is your school and post office equivalent).
Dr House would like a word with you
“He hates talking to patients”
Also, I feel at home but I don’t feel at house.
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”.
“Ahouse” sounds so much like an actual archaic word, but I can’t find evidence it was.
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.
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.
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.
I’M A BUS.
I read that it in Ralph Wiggums voice.
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…”
Dude, I am so post office.
That one genuinely made me laugh out loud; thanks, haha.
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.
