ESL General English Grammar Questions

Re: Go home!

moijelesuis — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 15:02:00 GMT

maj... new yorkers go "uptown" (and "downtown"). uptown is towards the north, dowtown is south... "town" is manhattan, NOT the rest of the city.

(and i am still not convinced that "downtown" is an adverb... but what the hell!)

Re: Go home!

Orpheus — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 14:49:03 GMT

Maj, I was replying to Moijelesuis's comment.

Re: Go home!

maj — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 14:40:55 GMT

You were talking about home???

Re: Go home!

Orpheus — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 14:38:35 GMT

Moijelesuis, I was talking about home, not downtown.
As for downtown it is NOT a preposition; in the above example it is indeed used as an adverb. However I agree with you that 'to the city center' does sound a bit awkward. Perhaps town centre (chiefly BrE I think) sounds better.

Re: Go home!

maj — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 14:32:47 GMT

You are right. Americans use downtown. They never use it in daily speech. They never seem to go uptown.

Re: Go home!

moijelesuis — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 14:13:55 GMT

careful orpheus, downtown is a preposition, not an adverb! as fpr whl626's suggestion... whereas non-english speakers find downtown without "to" awkward, native english listeners might find "to the city center" as, well, for lack of a better word, foreign. again, i have nothing against foreign speech patterns. on the contrary, i love them! (then again, maybe it's the american in me... "city center" is a rather uncommon and would probably never be used in daily speech. to me, "the city center" sounds like a particular building.)

Re: Go home!

whl626 — Wed, 03 Sep 2003 02:41:15 GMT

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 ?

Re: Go home!

Orpheus — Tue, 02 Sep 2003 15:22:18 GMT

I don't know if this is of any help, but try to think of home as a direction instead of destination. When you say 'I'll go home', you are actually saying 'I'm heading home' rather than 'I'm going to a destination called home'. I think that is why home is an adverb here, and not a noun.

Re: Go home !!!

moijelesuis — Mon, 01 Sep 2003 14:42:11 GMT

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...

Re: Go home !!!

whl626 — Mon, 01 Sep 2003 00:04:01 GMT

She is from China. Pem. There is no preposition involved in her native language between ' go ' and ' home '. It is just that in my opinion, ' to ' has become a must for a place to her. But in English especially for ' home ', it is an adverb. If ' house ' is used in the context. The mess is cleared

Another eg : ... to go downtown.

Downtown is also an adverb. But I wonder if in any circumstances, it can be used as a noun ?

Say, ' Can you show me the way to downtown ? ' or city center ?

Re: Go home !!!

Pemmican — Sun, 31 Aug 2003 17:05:32 GMT

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

Re: Go home !!!

maj — Sun, 31 Aug 2003 16:34:11 GMT

In Spanish we also use a preposition:

Ir + a + casa. "ir a casa" (go home)
estar+ en casa. "estar en casa" (be at home)

That is why lots of Spanish students use the preposition "to" as well, because they have it in their own language.

Re: Go home !!!

Pemmican — Sun, 31 Aug 2003 16:23:34 GMT

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?!

Re: Go home !!!

maj — Sun, 31 Aug 2003 15:02:03 GMT

Go + home
Be + at+ home
Home sweet home

Are you going home? Weren't you at home? There is nothing like home, home sweet home.

Go home!

whl626 — Sun, 31 Aug 2003 13:39:33 GMT

" 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 ?