Hi, home! I'm dad.
It must confuse English learners to hear phrases like, "I'm home", instead of "I am at home." We don't say I'm school, or I'm post office.
Submitted 6 months ago by ParabolicMotion@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 6 months ago
It’s because “home” in this formation is an adverb, whereas school is a noun. You can be an adverb- I’m tall, I’m short… - but you must be at a noun (or on, or in, or some other preposition).
cucumber_sandwich@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Ironically students of foreign language often cling to these grammatical structures and are less confused by the same word in different contexts.
jack@monero.town 6 months ago
You mean adjective, right? Adverb describes the verb, like talking loudly or quietly
TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is the adverb form. If it were an adjective, it nearer to the noun and not sperated by the verb like in “He stole home plate.” “Home” is modifying the state of being or “am”.
Mesa@programming.dev 6 months ago
They likely meant to say “adverbial phrase.”
guacupado@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Home is used differently than house. I’m home makes sense. I’m house doesn’t (which is your school and post office equivalent).
Jolteon@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Also, I feel at home but I don’t feel at house.
Worx@lemmynsfw.com 6 months ago
Dr House would like a word with you
ADTJ@feddit.uk 6 months ago
“He hates talking to patients”
NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social 6 months ago
It helps when you realize that home is an adverb in English.
ParabolicMotion@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Ah. You’re talking to a math grad.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
All languages have quirks, but English is awful.
I only realized that the more I studied other languages, making me reflect on English.
Like, English doesn’t have a future tense. It seems like a pretty basic thing, but in English you say “I’m going to X”. Why do you use the verb ‘to go’ there? Why is that the way English creates a future tense? If you’re headed to the store now: I’m going to the store. If it’s happening later: I’m going to go to the store. WTF is this bullshit? “going to go”? Just stop and think for a second about “going” and “go” in that phrase.
And the verb “to do”, why is that part of questions in English? Statement: You have a dog. Question: Do you have a dog? What does “to do” have to do with any of that? Why is “doing” the verb that somehow is used to turn a statement into a question?
And then there’s “to use”. Using is to take, hold, deploy, consume… so why is it sometimes part of the past tense. Sure, you can say “I walked to school”, but if you want to talk about habits or routines: “I used to walk to school”. Why is “to use” even involved there at all?
That’s not even accounting for spelling and pronunciation which is just ridiculous in English.
We have a letter ‘k’ that reliably makes a certain sound, and a letter ‘s’ that reliably makes another sound. But, a huge variety of words use “c” which can make a ‘k’ sound like cat, or an ‘s’ sound like city. The letter ‘c’ has no sound of its own, it’s just a randomizer machine for one of the other useful sounds. The letter ‘g’ has one sound that no other letter makes, in words like “grip” and “great”. There’s another letter “j” that makes a different sound, like in “jet” and the name “Jim”. But, for some reason, sometimes the “g” makes a “j” sound, so “Jim” and “gym” have the same sound but completely different spellings, leading to bullshit like the confusion over how to pronounce “gif”.
English has roughly 20 vowel sounds, depending on the accent, but the vowel letters are ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’, ‘u’, and sometimes ‘y’. So, you’d think that at least those 5/6 are sorted and the other 20 come from combinations, right? Nope. In British English, for some reason “can” and “can’t” get a different vowel sound for the ‘a’, despite “can’t” being a contraction for “can not”, which literally contains “can”. The letter “u” can sound different between “put” and “putt”, even though you’re just tacking a ‘t’ to the end of that combination of letters. If you tack an ‘s’ on the end it doesn’t change, but if you tack an ‘e’ on the end… whoa, an entirely new sound different from both “put” and “putt”.
I’m glad the world is slowly converging on one language that allows everyone to communicate with everyone else, but it sucks that the language that came out on top is English.
Mesa@programming.dev 6 months ago
I just want to point out that English’s future tense does exist, but it’s just non-distinct in many cases because, well, as you’ve said, English is fucked.
“We’re eating steak.”
You need context to determine whether this statement is talking about the present or the future. So much of the language is implied contextually that you can just drop off words and assume the listener will understand.
“What are we eating?” vs. “What are we eating tonight?”
It’s so funny because whereas a lot of other languages have rules with defined exceptions here and there, speaking English is more of a theoretical approach.
It feels like English just happened one day and we’re all trying to figure out why.
skyspydude1@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s so funny because whereas a lot of other languages have rules with defined exceptions here and there, speaking English is more of a theoretical approach.
I feel like this also makes it useful in that you can butcher the hell out of it, and still communicate somewhat effectively. I don’t feel that’s the case in some other languages, or maybe I’m willing to put up with my colleague’s broken English far more than they’re willing to put up with my broken German/Spanish/etc.
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
My uneducated guess is that England had so many colonies throughout history that a lot of languages affected English and we have this Frankenstein of a language
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
English’s future tense
There are various future tenses.
Future Simple / Simple Future: Will + [base form] – I’ll eat that later; or Going + [infinitive] – I’m going to eat that later.
Future Continuous: Will be + [present participle] – I’ll be eating that later.
Future Perfect: Will have + [past participle] – I’ll have eaten that later.
Future Perfect Continuous: Will have been + [present participle] – I’ll have been eating that later.
There’s also using the present continuous to talk about the future – I’m eating that tomorrow.
Also, the simple present – I eat that tomorrow.
English is flexible, but it’s also weird. There are a lot of distinctions that matter to native English speakers but that are really hard to put into rules. Like “will” vs. “going to”. They have slightly different meanings, but good luck coming up with an easy to understand rule about when to use each version.
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 6 months ago
As a dane, you have no idea how good you have it. Be happy that English became the lingua franca and not something worse.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
What are some of the issues with Danish?
boonhet@lemm.ee 6 months ago
English at least has “going to” and “will” for future. In Estonian you just use present simple and the only way to know you’re talking about the future is if you hint it with some time related word.
You just say “I go to the supermarket” and it’s ambiguous. You say “I go to the supermarket tomorrow” and you know it’s talking about the future.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Do you know if that’s unique to Estonian, or also true of Finnish? AFAIK, Finnish (and Estonian) are a weird language branch in that most of Europe is Indo-European. Even distinct languages like Italian and German are more related to each-other than Finnish.
boonhet@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I used grammatically incorrect examples on purpose to point out there’s no present simple vs present continuous distinction in Estonian either.
0ops@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I will go to the store?
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
What does willpower have to do with it?
Xeroxchasechase@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Hey what’s the difference between put and putt?
BritishDuffer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Putt is shorthand for “put and only put”.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Phonetically, put: /pʊt/ vs. putt: /pʌt/
ʊ is the sound from words like “book”, “hook”, “pull” or "should.
ʌ is the sound from words like “gut”, “double”, “butter”, “luck”, etc.
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Put is something you do to something (I will put this down), putt is a technique in golf (watch me land this putt).
match@pawb.social 6 months ago
In this usage, “home” is an adverb / adverbial!
DrSleepless@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Dude, I am so post office.
Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 6 months ago
That one genuinely made me laugh out loud; thanks, haha.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 6 months ago
No, actually it’s not even tickling any resemblance of confusion
uienia@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The concept of multiple languages seems to confuse so many monolinguists.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 6 months ago
It’s not intuitive if you don’t know several languages that some things in language are just how any human communicate, such as skipping words and stuff.
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
You’re clearly fluent if you describe “tickling any resemblance” of an effect. Learners would likely say something akin to “make me confused” or similar or less.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 6 months ago
Maybe, I don’t know what counts as fluent. But I am learning
FMEEE@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Same
somnuz@lemm.ee 6 months ago
For me it always just felt very close to “I am here” / “I am done” / “I am late” / “I am fine” — not as description of a place but state.
All the quirks, weirdnesses and exceptions are the best / most fun parts of any language. Close second, how it constantly evolves and where the words originated from.
EpeeGnome@lemm.ee 6 months ago
This is it exactly. “I am at home” describes your location. “I am home” describes your current state.
skygirl@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I had to explain to a friend recently why
“I’m at Steve’s house”
Was fine but
“I’m in Steve’s house”
Was weird. Like, get out of there before you get arrested.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That reminds me that my sixth grade teacher was adamant that 'I am going over Steve’s house" meant that one was visiting the house, not flying over it.
magikmw@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I like learning french because it shows me how weird the connections to english are.
“Chez Steve” means “At Steve’s [place]”. This one is more verbose in english.
But you can say “chez moi” for “at home”. And no need to specify which home.
tunetardis@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I’m at Steve’s house.
I’m in Steve’s backyard.
I’m at Steve’s backyard barbecue.
Yeah, English is pretty f’d up.
fossphi@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Nah, this kinda does make sense. You wouldn’t wanna be inside Steve’s barbecue, would you?
Sentau@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
I would sure appreciate that explanation. Like I broadly get that ‘at’ implies you are present with the person’s knowledge while ‘in’ implies you are there without their knowledge but I would like an explanation of why the meanings are implied as such
Michal@programming.dev 6 months ago
“I’m out of soap”
Well duh, you wouldn’t even fit inside one.
samus12345@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Do I fill in or fill out this form?
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Who is your soap guy? Your soap is too small.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Because home isn’t a normal location, it’s “home”.
It’s where you’re from.
Like, no one says “I’m house” or “I’m apartment building” because it’s not about the physical structure. It’s about being where the heart is. How many pillows do Grandmas need to stitch that on?
bane_killgrind@kbin.social 6 months ago
Adnoun
BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
My favorite confusing English sentence is “I have had too much to eat.”
- “Have had” is the same word twice, once in present tense, and again in past tense. It counts as one verb.
- Both “too” and “to” used.
- “Eat” is a noun.
Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Think of it this way - it’s “have had” because
“I had too much to eat” would be past tense, meaning you ate too much, say, last week
“I have too much to eat” is future tense, meaning you went to the buffet and got carried away, now you’ve got a massive plate of chicken in front of you
So "I have (right at this moment) had (just ingested) too much to eat (and now I’m farting a lot)
Also, in this case “to eat” isn’t a noun, it’s the infinitive verb
expr@programming.dev 6 months ago
Technically “to eat” is the Infinitive form of the verb, and using infinitives as nouns isn’t all that unusual in many languages.
joel_feila@lemmy.world 6 months ago
To eat, is a verb but taking in the role of a noun.
Jubei_K_08@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Reminded me of this sentence:
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.
ParabolicMotion@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That’s so true. Just avoid the awkwardness: I ate too much.
VulKendov@reddthat.com 6 months ago
Also sounds much less awkward if you contract I have. For Example: I’ve had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane.
TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Most people are talking the infinitive case for “eat”, but I’d like to point out the verb, “have had”, is the present perfect case. Still confusing and still agree with your simplification of “I ate too much”. But there’s still a meaningful difference between the two sentences.
scutiger@lemmy.world 6 months ago
But more importantly, did you eat too much, or have you had too much and now you can’t eat?
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 months ago
“I am House.” - Some TV doctor
Boozilla@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Your instincts are right in that English as a second language is tricksy and annoying. The “I’m home” thing never occured to me, but there’s plenty of stumbling blocks. They’re, their, and there. Idioms like “piece of cake”. It’s a long list. Not the hardest of all languages to learn, but it is confusing in places.
Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 6 months ago
Until you realize that home is also an adverb. Just to, y'know, drive home the point
can@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Don’t British people say in hospital or something?
siipale@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
kuneho@lemmy.world 6 months ago
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)
thatirishguyyy@lemmy.today 6 months ago
English is weird tbh
Burninator05@lemmy.world 6 months ago
When was the meeting where we decided not to say “I’m post office” because I use that phrase daily?
Lemminary@lemmy.world 6 months ago
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.
samus12345@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I remember a Vietnamese co-worker commenting that sometimes people say “Here you go” and sometimes they say “Here you are” when handing her things and wondered if there was a difference. I explained it was just two ways to say the same thing.
shneancy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
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
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
I am back.
I am home.
I am out.
I am office. 🤔
foggy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This happens a lot in English. Probably other languages too.
“Love you.”
“See ya.”
“Be right back.”
And more!
Amir@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
“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”.
Treeniks@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
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.
Fridam@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
Neh, being home is also a state of mind
Empricorn@feddit.nl 6 months ago
You’re thinking in terms of location, rather than state-of-being. “I’m home” is your status.
“I’m driving, I am bored, I’m safe, I am away”… None of those sound weird, do they? This, combined with the more technical grammar rules others have commented…
Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 6 months ago
I can be at home, but it's not until I'm in comfy pants, on the couch, with a drink in hand that I'm home
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 6 months ago
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Home is the adjective. It’s a state of being.
Many times I’ll walk in the door but need to log into work, and I’ll say to my wife “I’m not home yet”. As in, my external responsibilities are not completed and I am not available. When I’m available to my family or to relax, I have then become “home”.