Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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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. (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by ParabolicMotion@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

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[–] Whayle@kbin.social 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

An old I Love Lucy episode comes to mind, it's got to be tough! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZV40f0cXF4

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[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Not really, German here:
"Ich bin zuhaus(e)" -> "I'm home"
"Ich bin in der Bäckerei", "Ich bin bei der Post", "Ich bin bei den Großeltern" -> "I'm at the bakery", I'm at the post office", "~~I'm at my grandparents place~~ I'm at my grandparents" (or "I'm with my grandparents")

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[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

Well, tell them that home is more than just a location.

[–] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'M A BUS.

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[–] flerp@lemm.ee 4 points 7 months ago

Home is a state of being in addition to a location.

[–] ben16w@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

One of my favourites to think about is "How are you?". Taken literally that question makes no sense. "How are you?" "Well one day my parents had sex and I sort of grew from there...."

[–] owenfromcanada@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

If home is where your heart is, and I have my honey's heart, then saying "Honey, I'm home!" makes perfect sense.

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 7 months ago

Honey, I am at home!

[–] mister_monster@monero.town 4 points 7 months ago

Also "going to 'ospitol"

[–] nednobbins@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago

Only a little.

Every language has some set of rules to how your supposed to construct sentences. Every language has a ton of exceptions to those rules.

The main thing that makes English difficult is that it's a kind of hybrid language. It's in the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages but it borrows a ton of words from the Romance branch. The grammar is also a weird hybrid (for example we preserve grammatical gender in pronouns, like in German, but we've mostly dropped grammatical gender in nouns and articles, like in Chinese.

This is one of the simpler types of exceptions.

Consider the Chinese phrase: 好久不见 Litterally: "good time not see" But then someone explains that while 好 normally means "good" it can also mean "quite" or "alot".
So it's fairly easy to remember that it's generally translated as, "long time no see".

Those steps are pretty simple for a Chinese learner to understand. It's also not the hard part of learning a language.

[–] fsr1967@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

I'm the law!

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is a fun little bit of fluff on this subject- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/35-confusing-things-about-the-english-language_n_5b39b246e4b08c3a8f6b9a3b

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