This make same crazy. I mentally correct people all the time for saying them incorrectly, and yes, I do think you can say them incorrectly. For holiday meals at my house, my sister in law asks "what do you want me to take" no no no. It should be "what do you want me to bring". are there grammatical rules for this?
Technically speaking, it should probably be bring, but take does work, as you can take from or you can take to, as in taking your son to the park.
"To bring" something means to convey something, or in some other way cause it to come or to be conveyed, toward the speaker or toward some other designated location. So when your SIL asks you to bring something, she is asking you to convey it toward her, without needing to say "to my house." When you say, "What would you like me to bring?" You have not designated a location, but the context makes it clear that you do not mean, "What should I bring home to eat for a bedtime snack tonight?" but rather, "What should I bring to your house for the family dinner?" The designation is implied. The definitions of "to take," on the other hand, focus primarily on a designated person rather than location, a person who ends up in possession of the thing being taken, once the act of taking is completed. You have to scroll waaay down the list of definitions before you finally encounter "take" as a vernacular synonym for "convey, carry, transport," etc. In that sense, it seems that you can "take" something anywhere. You can take it home, you can take it to your SIL, you can take it to your SIL's house, you can take it to the movies. You can even just take it into the next room. I don't find the dictionaries helpful. If you're talking to me, it would be perfectly reasonable to say, "I'm taking a bottle of wine to my SIL's house." But if you're talking to her, I can't imagine you saying "I'll take a bottle of wine to your house." Everyone I know would say "bring." Still, the dictionary seems to say that your SIL's use is acceptable, even if she's the only person either one of us knows of who does it. I don't know what else to tell you! Maybe some other members can add perspective.
Actually, this is probably one of the most annoying misuse of the English language for me personally. And I always have to chalk it up to one of two things - either lazy/ignorant speech or the fact that many people can't tell if they're coming or going. Because I see the proper usage to be based on a very simple thing - direction. Toward or away from. If I were standing with you in YOUR house and asked you to transport something to MY house, I would simply say, "TAKE it to my house." If I was at home and made the same request, I would say "BRING it to my house." Can't you easily see the sense of location and direction involved? I cannot help but cringe when my grand-kids watch a certain episode of "Dora The Explorer." It's the one where Dora tells Boots they must return a book to the library. The library is far away (and of course they must ask The Map to show them the way) and what Dora actually says to Boots is that they "Need to bring the book to the library." Now that would be fine IF they were already IN the library. (Once again, a sense of location and direction.) But since they are not, I maintain that it's incorrectly using the wrong word of the two.
I agree with you, more or less. But Dictionary.com does not, and they have a lot more authority than I do. American dictionaries don't care much for rules. They just chronicle actual usage. There must be a lot of people out there like Orly's sister-in-law and your grandchildren. It's very unlikely that they're all lazy, ignorant or directionally challenged, so it's probably not a good idea to insult them. Save it for "I'm going to go lay down," "Just between you and I," and "nookyaler"
Yes, American dictionaries base their acceptance on usage. And since you mentioned it, I have no problem accepting that the majority of speakers are somewhat illiterate/lazy in their usage of words. After all, wasn't it the majority that caused the dictionaries (under their rule of popular usage) to include the word "ain't" in their highly respected pages? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Thanks for those three suggestions, Fraggle, but I prefer to not acquiesce and choose this one instead: "BRING it on - I can TAKE it!!" Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Ever a matter of perspective, lol.... I would not ask you to take me to your leader, I would ask you to bring your leader to me. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
If she uses "What do you want me to take?" as a short form for "What do you want me to take from home to bring here/to your house?" then I think she is correct. Toward or away from whom? Yourself or the other person? Theoretically, away from yourself is toward the other person - but who is more important, you or them? Which one of you should be the determining factor for the way you understand the direction of action? I do think that the development of individualistic, self-centred reasoning in modern American culture affects the way pairs like take and bring are used and understood. No, but I would say that you are old-school humble. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Do you say "I and you" or do you say "you and I"? Do you say "you and I" but feel a bit of discomfort at it?
Not that hard to figure out. You bring stuff with you and take stuff away. Taking you to the leader because you are leaving, iow's taken away from one place to another. Bring because they are bringing you someplace else. Either one. Take only if the cake is already in your\her possession.
I agree with this. I think: to bring = to make something come to take = to make something go As in: * Please bring me a salad (salad should come to me) * Please take me a salad (sounds not ok) * Please take this salad (salad should go from me) * Please take out this garbage (garbage should go from me) * Please bring out this garbage (sounds not ok) * Please bring me a paper (asking paper to come) * Please take me a paper (sounds not ok) * Please take this paper (asking paper to go) etc. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! p.s.: I am not an English speaker, this is just an opinion!
LOL......'twas an example of droll humor.....presumptuous that the leader should be brought at my behest rather than the other way around. Grammatically correct, if not politically so.....Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Depends on a the circumstances. I brought it with me and i took it with me are interchangeable. "did you take it" "did you bring it?' Seems pretty clear. ah, like http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony
Not quite, because the words were used correctly and not to convey an opposite meaning. Close enough though..... droll –adjective amusing in an odd way; whimsically humorous; waggish. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
English is a democratic language. There is no Academy dictating proper usage, as in Spain and France--and I don't even know if they exist there anymore. There is no government office dictating rules, as in early 20th century Germany--which is why they use Fernsprecher and Kraftwagen instead of the horrible foreign words telefon and automobil like the rest of Europe. What's "correct" in English is decided by the people who use it every day to manage their lives, not by academicians who yearn for the grandiose expressions of yore, or by government agents attempting to purify their culture. That said, the three communities who probably have the most influence on the development of our language today are entertainers, science and the press, yet even their influence has more impact on vocabulary and idioms than on grammar. And what's wrong with "ain't"? "To be" is the only verb in our entire lexicon that has three present-tense inflections: am/is/are. All other verbs have only two: see/sees, think/thinks, go/goes; and moreover they are almost always regular inflections, formed by adding -s or -es. ("Does" and "says" look regular in writing, but their pronunciation is irregular.) To compress "isn't" and "aren't" into a single inflected form, "ain't," is simply the engine at work which has, for a millennium and a half, been pruning the insanely complicated grammatical paradigms of the German dialect spoken by the Anglo-Saxons into today's much more straightforward inflection systems. (Not to mention, "are" isn't even an Anglo-Saxon word: they said sindan. The Norsemen brought "are" to Angle Land.) The dictionary definition of "bring" specifies the motion as being toward an already (often implicitly) designated location, or, if no location is designated, toward the speaker. In vernacular speech, once one party to a conversation speaks of something to be brought to him/her, then that becomes the implicity designated location for all subsequent utterances of the verb "to bring" until the topic is closed. "Can you bring your Scrabble set to my party tonight? Someone stole all my vowels." -- "Sure, I'll bring it." I've never once heard anyone say "I and you." People who garble their grammar garble it completely and say, "Remember when me and you were in Mr. O'Hara's history class?" That still depends on the frame of reference. The direction of movement must be specified, if only implicitly. This is because you're inserting an indirect object. "Bring me a hamburger" is shorthand for "Bring a hamburger to me." The indirect object takes the place of a prepositional phrase, and must always precede the verb. The verb "to bring" takes an indirect object, just like "give," "send" and several other verbs. But "to take" does not. It's not legal in English to shorten "Take this book to her" into "Take her this book." That's not correct grammar. (Note: People are starting to talk this way. I googled up a few instances of this grammatical construction, but they were very colloquial. That probably means it will be in the dictionary in fifteen years. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) Here you're using an idiom: "take out," meaning "remove." You can't depend on idioms preserving all of the grammatical nuances of their component words. You can say, "See that old car over there? Take out the back seat. I want to use it for hauling." To "take out" means "to remove." It makes no assumption about where the object to be removed is supposed to go. Your first question in response might be, "Where do you want me to put the old seat?"
The latter is quite clear in meaning... the former is not, and is ambiguous. The latter is a question asking someone if they carried/conveyed an object (it) to the current location. The former, however, is merely a question asking if they removed an object from its previous location, with no actual implication of where it was brought to. "Did you take it?" could be asking if they stole a diamond when they had an opportunity, for example. As far as I understand the usage: you take an object from one place and bring it to another. However, as suggested previously, depending on circumstance there can be an implication in the use of "take" of a subsequent "bring". Such as: "What do you want me to take?" as it might be clear that anything taken would then be brought with them. Likewise, one can not bring an object that they have not already taken, so when someone says "Bring that bottle of wine and we will drink it later." there is the implication of taking the bottle first, then bringing it.
That's the basic sense of the words, but when you're dealing with basic everyday words the "basic sense" is often partially or even totally overriden by their relationships with other words in the sentence, not to mention context. When you say, "I'm going to take an apple to work tomorrow because the food in the company cafeteria is too heavy and too expensive and the lines are too long," you make no statement at all about where that apple is coming from. Do you have an apple tree, so you're "taking" it from your back yard? Has your neighbor asked everyone to help themselves to the bounty of apples on his tree, so you're "taking" it from his yard? Did you just go grocery shopping on Saturday so you're "taking" it from your kitchen? Are you going to stop on the way to work tomorrow so you're "taking" it from the 7/11? Clearly this sentence is all about "toward," not "away from." "All"? I'd be reluctant to make such an absolute statement about language, or for that matter any aspect of human culture. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! My example shows that "take" may be used to focus on either direction. "Bring" is more unidirectional.
You need to seriously update your knowledge of German language and culture. Doing linguistic political agitation again - your favorite pastime? Then you need to listen more carefully.
My personal usage is: Take it with you when you go. Bring it with you when you come. Was your sister-in-law at your house or hers when she asked?
my house. But why does it matter where she was during the conversation? The day of, she would be bringing something from her house to mine
