Please English guru correct me.

In this case I'll write

I went to mountain climbing. (I went to hiking) Mountain climbing means where or for what so neet 'to'.

He is a bicycle rider. Because of 'he' it will be rider, not riding.

I also interesting in the right variations.

Thanks.

Okay.

"I went to mountain climbing" should be "I went mountain climbing".

EXPLANATION:
"I went to Switzerland" is correct. "I went to the top of Mount Everest" is correct, but, alas, "I went to mountain climbing" is not. The reason is that "went" requires an ADVERB. Now, the phrase "mountain climbing" is a participle - something which is DERIVED from a verb, but which is not itself a verb. (It's derived from the verb phrase "to climb mountains"). Participles are normally adjectives, but they can also be adverbs sometimes, as in this case.

More simply, "I went to mountain climbing" is wrong for the same reason that "I went to there" is wrong. (Should be "I went there").


"He is a bicycle rider". Correct - but because of the "a", not because of the "he". "He is bicycle riding" would also be correct (but would mean something different). "He is a bicycle rider" means "He is someone who regularly or habitually rides bicycles", where as "He is bicycle riding" means "He is in the act of riding a bicycle RIGHT NOW".

Incidently, we would normally say "cyclist" instead of "bicycle rider", and "cycling" instead of "bicycle riding".

In the sentence 'I went there', 'there' works as an adverb meaning 'to or toward that place', that's why it doesn't take 'to'. Just like in 'I went downtown'. The word 'downtown', in this case, is acting as an adverb and it means 'toward the lower or central part of town'.

"mountain" is a noun, however the wider sentence does not (cannot) treat this word in isolation, or as part of its OWN syntax. It's just like in math, when you say: 1+2*3, you have to parse (2*3) FIRST before you can parse the rest, which then becomes 1+6. If you parse things in the wrong order, you'll get the wrong answer.

In normal usage, "mountain" would be a count noun. Therefore we say "one mountain, two mountains", and so on. In this usage, we may construct the clause "I climb mountains" (in which "mountains" takes the plural form). But now comes the sneaky bit - we take the phrase "climb mountains", and then simultaneously (1) change the word order, and (2) treat "mountain" as though it were a mass noun, to give us the phrase "mountain climbing" (not "mountains climbing"). Now we have a phrase which acts like a verb. Changing the word order is essential because that is what makes it possible for the phrase to have a verb ending, so now we can tweak it like we can tweak any other verb - "I mountain-climb; you mountain-climb; she mountain-climbs, etc". The hyphen is optional, but in this case it makes things clearer. So - given that we accept "to mountain-climb" as a verb, just as though it were a single word, it follows that we can form the participle "mountain-climbing" (which functions as an adjective or as an adverb depending on the requirements of a sentence).

The word "mountain" plays no real part in the wider sentence "I went mountain climbing", in exactly the same way that the "2" in "1+2*3" plays no part in the addition. By the time you get to the interpretation of the outer sentence, the word "mountain" has already been "consumed". The inner phrase "mountain climbing" must be parsed FIRST, which leaves the outer sentence reading "I went ".

Rommie