Submitted 3 weeks ago by GrimReaperCZ@lemmy.zip to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
In spanish they have three words for here and there.
Things near enough to touch are aquí.
Things close but not near enough to touch are ahí.
Things far away are allí.
In english i would just say here for anything in my general vicinity (maybe within 2 meters) and there for any other distance.
I prefer “allá” instead of “allí”, both are the same
Haha was going to offer this. Currently live in a predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood and hear the distinction made often. It must be useful to have the additional word in between here and there.
If I can reach it it’s here, and if I have to point it’s there
It’s all relative.
Where is the person I’m talking to?
Where is the person/thing I’m talking about?
I’m sure there are grammar rules for when to use which, but anyone who speaks English could tell you that’s neither here nor there.
In some English dialects, we have a middle distance indicator for those sort of… ambiguous distances.
We have:
This here
That there
And we have “just over there”.
If someone said the third option, you’d know it wasn’t far by the use of “just”, but also not close enough to count as here, even if it’s not technically formal language.
Some dialects also have an additional category to indicate things so far you can’t see them, like “over yonder”
And “yonder” and “over yonder,” although I don’t head the former at all anymore and the later is increasingly rare
Something can be both without moving.
“Did my package arrive yet?”
“Yeah, it’s here.”
“Where?”
“On the counter there.”
If I can hit it by softly lobbing a rock at it, it’s here. Farther than that but I can still ull see it, it’s there. Out of sight it’s over there somewhere.
My a priori expectation of where [thing] would be before I knew where it was.
I’ve always thought the cut-off is whether it’s near the speaker (“here”) or near the person being spoken to (“there”). My native language has a three-way distinction (near the speaker (“dito”), near the person spoken to (“diyan”), far from both (“doon”)), so it’s pretty easy to just collapse it to “here” and “there”.
foggy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s not physical distance.
“Here in earth, the air is made mostly of oxygen.”
“Here in the milky way Galaxy…”
It’s about locality to the subject.
Windex007@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s beyond that, the context even matters. If I’m in my garage, and my car is parked in the driveway:
-If someone asks where the car is (implication my wife could be out getting groceries, it could be at the shop, etc…) the answer is “here” (on the premises) as opposed to “there” (the grocery store, the shop, etc)
-If I want to change the oil in my garage, I could as someone to bring it “here” (being the garage) because it’s currently “there” (the driveway).
In both cases, my location and the vehicles location is the exact same. “For what purpose?” Informs if something is “here” or “there”.
foggy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
In both cases, it is decided by subject locality. Not object locality.
As I said.
vatlark@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So “here” is close enough for your needs. “There” is too far away to be useful.
vatlark@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Arguably you are touching, or nearly touching, both of those things.