Go home!

" It's time to go home "

There is a friend of mine who always add an uneccesary ' to ' between go and home. eg ' go to home '. It is sure a mistake. But the problem is after being corrected for the past few years, she is still stuck with the problem.

I know why this is the case. I believe that she has the thinking pattern like ' to ' is from a place to another. So as long as a place is invoved, she automatically says ' to ' + ' destination '.

My thinking pattern is such, I try to figure out from the point of grammar, ' home ' is an adverb used to modify ' go '. Not a noun in this case, so no ' to '.

I did a lot of heavy thinking on breaking her thinking pattern and put her on the right track. Somehow I fail.

Any suggestions ? By the way, did what I said to the use of ' home ' correctly ?

whl, what language is your friend's first one?
Maybe the reason is that she uses this "to" because there would also occur a preposition in this case in her native language.

To give an example from German again: Here you have two possibilities to express it:
1) "Ich gehe heim." literally: I go home
2) "Ich gehe nach Hause." literally: I go to house -> to where I live. (nach is a preposition)
-> They both mean exactly the same and are always interchangeable (even the 1st one is more used in southern German while the 2nd one in the north).

In the first sentence, "heim" is an adverbial of place, while Haus in the 2nd sentence is a noun which has to be connected by a preposition.
So maybe your friend's native language is one that expresses "to go home" by using a preposition+noun instead of an adverbial term and therefore this could be a reason why she messes it up?!

That's what I meant - it seems very evident to me that that will certainly be the reason.

downtown can be used as a noun... ex: Montréal's downtown is not as lively as it used to be.

as for your example, i would be more likely to say "show me the way downtown", again, as a preposition (not an adverb as you have suggested).

as for eliminating the superfluous prepositions, it is tough. my turkish boyfirend is forever making little errors like this. i never corrected him until he asked me to, and now it drives him nuts to hear how often he makes mistakes. i love the way he speaks, accent and mistakes both, but for any formal writing i make sure to proof anything he needs to send. good luck to your friend...

I second that. Regarding ' downtown ', non-English speakers find it awkward to say ' Can you show me the way downtown '. How about change it to ' Can you show me the way to the city center ' , sounds more acceptable to them and closer to the structure of their mother tongue in the first place ?