Former expatriate Filipina writer Isabel E. who’s now enjoying her retirement in the homeland surprised me with this e-mailed question three days before last Christmas:
“I don’t recall if I had asked you about this grammar concern. I get bothered when people say ‘He was sick so they
brought him to the hospital’? Why not say ‘He was sick so they
took him to the hospital’?
“It always strikes me that
bringing is something you’re carrying (home) with you, and that if you’re
going to a destination, surely it should be ‘I’ll
take you to hospital" because you’re delivering someone.”
I replied that
take is indeed the correct usage for both of those actions. I don’t remember though that Isabel had asked me about the misuse of “bring” and “take,” but I told her that I discussed that verb-pair, along with “come” and “go,” as among “The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors” in a series of my Times columns in 2007. (That series came out in book form the following year and was later posted as a 20-part series in the Forum.)
The problem with the verb-pairs “bring” and “take” and “come” and “go” is two-fold:
(1) they are highly irregular verbs, and
(2) the verbs in each pair denote practically the same action but differ in the direction of the action or motion with respect to the speaker. This is why many young nonnative speakers of English often stumble when using these four verbs.
“Bring” and “take.” This verb-pair’s usage depends on the speaker’s or listener’s position or point of view: (1) Use “bring” to refer to
a movement towards the speaker or listener: “Please
bring your passbook for updating tomorrow.” “We
brought you some books from the library; (2) Use “take” to refer
to a movement away from the speaker or listener: “Let’s
take the children to the mall for dinner.” “Please
take the money and go.”
(3) But when the point of reference isn’t the same as that of the speaker or writer, use either “bring” or “take” depending on context: “The oppositionist Congressmen
brought their impeachment complaint to the Lower House” or “The oppositionist Congressmen
took their impeachment complaint to the Lower House.” The use of “brought”
describes the action from the oppositionists’ point of view, and the use of “took”
describes the same action from the entire Lower House’s point of view.
“Come” and “go.” This verb-pair gets continually misused even by some college-educated adults well into their professional careers. Take this reporting by a TV newscaster during field coverage a few years back: “The President
will go here and is expected anytime now.” Of course it should be: “The President
will come here and is expected anytime now.”
So, once and for all, let’s review the verb-pairs “come” and “go”:
(1) Use “come” to describe movement towards where the speaker or listener is: “Please
come here tonight.” “Some friends
are coming tonight for dinner.
Can you come, too?”;
(2) Use “go” to describe movement away from where the speaker or listener is: “From here, please
go directly to the park.” “You missed them. They
have already gone home.”
IMAGE CREDIT: BBC LEARNING ENGLISHTake note though that when speaking on the phone or writing mail to someone, use “come” and not “go” when referring to a movement towards that person or towards his or her residence or home country, as in “Hello, Fred, some urgent business detained me in Tokyo, but
I’ll be coming home in a day or two.”
Likewise, use “come with” instead of “go with” when both speaker and listener are going to the same place together, as in “Would you like
to come with us to the park?” and “I wonder why he didn’t want
to come with us.”
(Next week:
Back to the perfect infinitive using modals) January 23, 2020
This essay, 1,179th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the January 16, 2020 print and Internet editions of The Manila Times
,© 2020 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
