A home vs home

Question

The park is home to thousands of amazing wild animals, from elephants and lions to zebra and crocodiles!
I read the above in Akimbo adventures.

Shouldn't there be an indefinite article "a" before "home" in the above? How do decide whether "home" is countable or uncountable in the above?

Is home a noun or an adverb here and how do we confirm that?

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

JigneshbharatiShouldn't there be an indefinite article "a" before "home" in the above?

Adding "a" doesn't change the grammar. It's correct either way.

But this is an idiom. We say that a place "is home to" certain people or animals (occasionally things) when we mean that those people or animals live there, that they can be found there.

JigneshbharatiHow do we decide whether "home" is countable or uncountable in the above?

We don't. It's just part of an idiom, so we don't need to ask that question. It's countable in the idiom, but we never change the idiom and say "is homes to", so it's doesn't do much good to know that it's countable.

Another word like "home" is found in the idiom "is headquarters to". (Oshawa is headquarters to General Motors Canada.) Here 'headquarters' is a plural form, and that's how we use it in this idiom. It doesn't matter that it's countable. We just have to use the idiom as it is given.

JigneshbharatiIs home a noun or an adverb here and how do we confirm that?

It's a noun. It stands for a place (where those animals live, where you can find those animals). If 'home' were an adverb, "the park is home" would mean, perhaps, that after the park had left its home to go to work for the day, the park had come back to have dinner, so at that time we can say "the park is home", i.e., the park is inside the house where it lives. Parks don't live in houses, so I think we can dismiss the idea that "home" is an adverb in your sentence.

Examples:

In an aquaponic greenhouse, plants are grown in water that also is home to fish.
The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden is home to two breeding pairs of pottos.
Mysore is home to the best of South Indian cuisine.

Note that the last example below requires the paraphrase "can be found in Mysore" because we don't say that food "lives" somewhere.

The short version: is home to means is (the place) where you can find.

CJ

A home vs home

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