Job Discussion Forums

[Stephen Jones]

This is one of the great mixups between Spanish and English or other Romance languages such as French and Catalan.

I use to amuse my Saturday morning Madrid class by telling other Spanish friends over the phone "Ahora vengo", instead of "Ahora voy". When I told a Catalan speaker this he looked puzzled and said, but "I've been saying the same you did all my life!". In Catalan it would be correct "Ara vinc", but his non-Catalan friends must have had a good chuckle.

In carnac's sentence 'came' suggests the location is closer to the speaker's heart than 'went' does, but I doubt if the difference is that significant.

[gaijinalways]

Interesting. Obviously the 'coming' depends on where the speaker is and where the listener is. I like the examples from dmb, makes sense. Also this idea of a place being closer to your heart would seem likely as well. Makes the whole 'go' and 'come' idea a lot more complicated, yes?

[Kent F. Kruhoeffer]

On a more serious note than my graphic on page 1,

this reminds me of the bring vs. take question.


I'm no grammar guru, but this is how I learned it:


movement away from the speaker: take / go

movement toward the speaker: bring / come


It may be simplistic but it works for me.







Thailand teaching and travel resources available here :::: The Master Index Thailand ::::

[Guy Courchesne]

I still have similar troubles with the Spanish in this respect. Traer, llevar, portar. Mexican students also struggle with the differences in bring, take, and carry.

[sallycat]

the problem with this one is that it depends on where the speaker is imagining themself to be. if you say "i'll bring a bottle of champagne to your party" (stilted, i know), you are picturing yourself arriving at the party, although neither you nor the person you are talking to may be anywhere near the party's proposed location at the time that you are speaking.

[some waygug-in]

It's funny, (curious) I have had some of my adult students ask me that question here in Korea. They seemed to have the impression that English differs from Korean in the use of these 2 basic verbs.

Upon careful study of various sentences in Korean, I "came" to the conclusion that the usage was not all that different, the confusion "comes" from the position the speaker imagines him/herself to be in at the time of speaking. (As someone above has mentioned)

Not specifically related, but interesting is the fact that so many times my Korean coworkers will say something to me in perfect English, but I have no clue what they are talking about. They are also baffled by the fact that I am not understanding them. The problem is not the words they use, but the lack of context. I have to rack my brain and try to guess what they might be referring to.
Without the context, often words, phrases and even whole sentences lose their meaning.


I came for the doggie style, but found the doggie had went all over the place.