bring v/s take

Question

Hallo teachers!I was browsing on the Internet and came across the following examples :Examples  Ben brought a friend home from school today.  Lucy takes her blanket with her when she goes outside.  Take a credit card with you when you travel to Seattle.  Please bring that chair in here from the dining room. Source: Capital Community College'shttp://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/ ---------------------------I have a confusion about the sentence number 3, I'd have  used the verb "bring" instead..RegardsInstructor 1955

Hoa Thai · Accepted Answer

Hi,
It depends on the point of reference (POR) of the speaker:
If the destination is the same as the POR, use bring.
If the destination is different from the POR, use take.

Ben brought a friend home from school today. (POR: home, Destination: home)
Lucy takes her blanket with her when she goes outside. (POR: home, Destination: outside)
Take a credit card with you when you travel to . (POR: home, Destination: Seatle)
Please bring that chair in here from the dining room. (POR: here, Destination: here)

Combined example: The cashier tells the new waiter, “Take this bill to the customer and bring the money back.”

Take this bill - POR: cashier’s counter, Destination: customer’s table.

Bring the money back – POR: cashier’s counter, Destination: cashier’s counter.

Hope that helps,
Hoa Thai

Yoong Liat · Answer

Instructor1955Hallo teachers!

I was browsing on the Internet and came across the following examples :

Examples

Ben brought a friend home from school today.
Lucy takes her blanket with her when she goes outside.
Take a credit card with you when you travel to Seattle.
Please bring that chair in here from the dining room. Hi Instructor,

1. Think of 'bring' as 'come', and 'take' as 'go'

Ben brought a friend home from school today.

If you're not sure whether to use 'take' or 'bring', rephrase the sentence using 'came'.

Hence, Ben came home from school with a friend. Therefore, you've to use 'brought'.

2. Lucy takes her blanket with her when she goes outside.

Lucy goes outside with her blanket. Therefore, you've to use 'take'.

Apply what I've told you to to the third and fourth sentences and see whether you find it easier to choose between 'bring' or 'take'.

Best wishes

Anonymous · Answer

Instructor1955Hallo teachers!

I was browsing on the Internet and came across the following examples :
Examples

Ben brought a friend home from school today.
Lucy takes her blanket with her when she goes outside.
Take a credit card with you when you travel to Seattle.
Please bring that chair in here from the dining room.
Source: Capital Community College's
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/

---------------------------

I have a confusion about the sentence number 3, I'd have used the verb "bring" instead..

Regards

Instructor 1955

Hi Instructor,

There are no hard rules. For # 3, "bring" works fine with the context. May I take / bring a friend with me to the party? Either one is just as good.

Yoong Liat · Answer

Hi Anon

You wrote: There are no hard rules. For # 3, "bring" works fine with the context. May I take / bring a friend with me to the party? Either one is just as good.

Could you please extract the relevant part from your source to show us that your response to question 3 as stated above is correct? I couldn't find anything regarding the rule for the usage of 'take' and 'bring'. Also, explain to the members why either 'take' or 'bring' is correct for the above sentence.

Thank you in advance.

BarbaraPA · Answer

I don't think it's a conflict, YL, just a matter of point of view.

If you are hosting the party, and I'm talking to you, I may ask if I can bring a friend, because I'm thinking of "you" as the ultimate destination, even if we are at a coffee bar while we talk and the party is at your house. I'm thinking about coming to your party and I'm with you.

On the other hand, I may think of your house as the destination, which is NOT where we are right now, and I may use "take." I'm thinking about going (there) to your house for the party.

(I wasn't Anon, but I do see how it could be variable, just depending on how you see the destination.)

Likewise, if I live in Seattle, I may tell you to bring your teddy bear (or whatever it was) because I think of you coming toward me.

Yoong Liat · Answer

Hi Barbara

What do you think of Instructor's sentences? Would you provide different answers?

Ben brought a friend home from school today.
Lucy takes her blanket with her when she goes outside.
Take a credit card with you when you travel to Seattle.
Please bring that chair in here from the dining room.

Anonymous · Answer

Mr. Young,

I have been reading on the sideline. You seem to be a polite and helpful guy but your apporach toward learning is too rigid in my opinion. English can be learned and improved by combining other method and resources. Books are good but that's not all there is. People can learn more if they open there eyes are ears. Goodman and you had several lengthy exchanges. I won't get involved with the rights and wrongs, but I do feel that not only do you rely on others qutoation and books reference for answers, also you demand that other do the same. I am sure you have read the coments from few others. Either you had refused to recognize their inputs or you just didn't care, you still keep challenging posters who happended to disagree with you. Based on your reply, you seemed to have disagreed with mine also. So as a coutesy to your reply, I will give you a reference. I have to say, in principle, you are also correct but mind you, this reference is one you may not like.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bring and Take

Contrary to what some might believe, "bring" and "take" are oftentimes interchangeable. While there may be those who prefer to observe a distinction between "bring" and "take", it does not mean that those who do not observe this distinction are wrong.

Oftentimes the choice between "take" and "bring" depends on the speaker’s point of view.

?? He brings his lunch to work every day.

• emphasizes movement in the direction of the destination

?? She takes her lunch to work every day.

• emphasizes movement away from the starting point

This is the idea: "They take their lunch away from home. They bring their lunch to their workplace.

?? It’s going to rain. Remember to take an umbrella with you.

• carry it with you from the point at which you start

?? It’s going to rain. Remember to bring an umbrella with you.

• carry it with you to your destination

?? take away – go away – go from – leave – remove

?? bring to – go to - come to – arrive – put

Usage Note excerpt from The American Heritage Dictionary, Bartleby.com

http://www.bartleby.com/61/51/B0485100.html

USAGE NOTE:

In most dialects of American English bring is used to denote motion toward the place of speaking or the place from which the action is regarded: Bring it over here. The prime minister brought a large retinue to Washington with her. Take is used to denote motion away from such a place: Take it over there. The President will take several advisers with him when he goes to Moscow. When the relevant point of focus is not the place of speaking itself, the difference obviously depends on the context. We can say either The labor leaders brought or took their requests to the mayor's office, depending on whether we want to describe things from the point of view of the labor leaders or the mayor. Perhaps for this reason, the distinction between bring and take has been blurred in some areas; a parent may say of a child, for example, She always takes a pile of books home with her from school. This usage may sound curious to those who are accustomed to observe the distinction more strictly, but it bears no particular stigma of incorrectness or illiteracy. •The form brung is common in colloquial use in many areas, even among educated speakers, but it is not standard in formal writing.

http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/053.html American Heritage Dictionary

A parent may say of a child, for example, She always takes a pile of books home with her from school, as the parent imagines the situation from the child’s viewpoint. This usage may sound curious to those who are accustomed to observe the distinction more strictly, but there is really nothing wrong with it.

Here is how "bring" and "take" function.

bring – indicates movement towards something – bring to

take – indicates movement away from something – take away

?? Bring it over here. Bring it over there. Take it over there.

?? But not: ~~Take it over here~~. – in the sense of moving something away

?? Please take the trash away. Remove it from this place. Take it away from where it is now.

?? Please bring the pizza over here. Put it over here.

• over here = where the speaker is

?? Please bring the pizza over there. Put it over there.

• over there = another place

?? Please take the pizza away.

• meaning "Put it in another place. Remove it."

?? Please take the pizza over there. Remove it from where it is and put it over there.

• Remove it. = Take it from this place.

?? But not: ~~Please take the pizza over here~~. ~~Take the pizza here~~.

?? ~~Please take the pizza to my house. You wouldn’t say this if you were at your house.~~

?? Please take the pizza to my house. If you were somewhere else, then you could say this.

?? Your "house" can be "here" or "there". Take the pizza there. But not: ~~Take the pizza here.~~

?? Your "house" can be "here" or "there". 1. Bring the pizza here. 2. Bring the pizza there. You could say either one of these sentences depending on where you are.

?? Take it from the pizzeria and bring it to my house. Deliver it to my house. Bring the pizza to my house.

?? You could say, "Take the pizza to my house." if you are not at home. Deliver the pizza to my house.

© Copyright Steven David Bloomberg 2004-2005 – An ESL/EFL Article from LTE

BarbaraPA · Answer

Yoong LiatHi Barbara

What do you think of Instructor's sentences? Would you provide different answers?

Ben brought a friend home from school today. 90% of the time, I'd say "brought." Perhaps if two teachers were talking about the new boy, Ben, and how nice it is that he's making friends, in which Ben and the friend were going away from the speakers.
Lucy takes her blanket with her when she goes outside. - I could go either way on this one. It doesn't say she goes away from me, nor toward me.
Take a credit card with you when you travel to Seattle. Take, unless you are coming to visit me in Seattle and that's my point of view.
Please bring that chair in here from the dining room. - This one is so clear - by saying "in here" it's clear the movement is toward the speaker, so "bring" is the only one that makes sense

Best wishes.

Hoa Thai · Answer

Hi Yoong Liat,

Since Grammar Geek was kind enough to share her thought about flexibility in learning with you, I would also like to take this opportunity to answer your question about my use of online resource to address the need for the same idea, flexible learning. If this post is regarded as an intrusion, I would like to apologize to everyone first.

I often use online resources because I like to share my habit with other learners. This forum like many others draws a lot of attention from inquisitive minds. The moderators and people who help answer the questions are doing their best but resource and time are limited. Therefore, I use online information to resolve my confusion first. If I am not quite satisfied with the readily available information, I’ll ask my questions then. I do the same thing when I read an answer given to other learners and find it not quite clear or different from what I have learned. Confirming what you know will enhance your confidence.

However, the important aspect of learning is to discovery new and different ideas, which is the food for growth. Take the ‘the most fair vs. fairest’ thread as an example. If we had adamantly stick with fairest as the only correct way, we would miss the pleasure that the most fair might offer. In contrary, if we had chosen the most fair over fairest, we would go against academia instructions, which are the foundation of our learning – and that would be unwise!

As you have found out in your learning process, people whom we look up to as experts sometimes do not agree - for a very simple reason: we are ****-sapiens but we are not homogeneously cloned! We learn then form our own opinions. We could become an expert as we learn one more thing that the others do not know. That one more thing could be just in the next page of the same book!

During the process of learning and growing, learners will eventually challenge their masters just as teenagers question the knowledge of their parents. You must have noticed that some learners start questioning the validity of their teachers’ instructions already?

Coming back to the question you asked me about using authoritative resources. If what I have said registered with you, these resources do disagree among themselves. Evidently, the online-search hit ratio is not 1. We might select a few sources that support what we think is right and ignore the rest. Why do we do that? and what make we think the ones we selected are even right? We could reason because either they are respected by their peers or they belong to the majority or they say what we read in our books. That only gives us the confirmation we seek for based on our limited knowledge and analytical skill. As long as we keep debating about who is right and who is wrong, the extra dimension that I mentioned earlier about learning is still missing.

That said, I do not denounce our search for experts’ advice. If we don’t stand on their shoulders, how could we grow taller? However, we must ask, validate, and ask again. In my opinion, we need to keep our foundation firm but be ready to accept the differences, where treasure and pleasure might be hidden. I have often quoted Edward D. Johnson in a few posts of mine. With my limited and unskilled knowledge, he is my authoritative figure. He wrote, “Good English is not the best English. The best English frequently is good English, but the best users of English – the great writers and poets, the great public speakers and conversationalists – are often innovative and idiosyncratic and therefore often less respectful of the strictures of good English than most of us dare to be if we want to avoid criticism.” Therefore, the question is do we dare to be different, which could gain us fame or destroy us? That is for each person to decide.

Take care,
Hoa Thai

Anonymous · Answer

Hi Hoa Thai,

Bravo! Thumbs up! Ichiban! What a nice piece of writing!

I like it! That’s all I can say….

bring v/s take

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