Bring or Take
"I brought a gift for my friend when I visited him". Does that sound weird? Yes, to most people who learned English growing up in India. I came to the United States about four years ago and have always found this usage very funny. I once mentioned this to a friend of mine and she didn't even think that there was anything wrong in the usage. I'm not surprised because she and others have been taught that way. I say that the sentence should have been "I took a gift for my friend when I visited him". The words bring and take have directions associated with them. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, bring is used to denote motion toward the place of speaking. So when I say "I visited my friend", I'm not at my friend's place any more and so my friend's place is not the place of speaking. But some argue that more than the place of speaking, the context is what determines whether to use bring or take and make that as an excuse to use these two words interchangeably. I would say, if you are talking about here or come, use bring and if you are talking about there or go, then use take. But hey, as a friend of mine once said, why would any one listen to a foreigner talking about correct English?
Another usage that is very annoying is how people read fractions. I have heard many people read 6.23 as six point twenty three. I say that this is obviously wrong. It should actually be read six and twenty three hundredths but for clarity we spell out the numbers as six point two three. It is not twenty three because the place value of the two after the decimal point in the number is not twenty but two over a ten.
To wind up today's post, here is an interesting gift idea for Christmas - a cell phone with a lot of cool features and an LED that glows when the government is tapping your conversation. Thanks to Jay Leno for that one.
Merry Christmas.