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Socoder -> Off Topic -> English is weird... |
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| Sun, 22 May 2011, 23:40 | |
Afr0
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So I'm reviewing English submissions on Live Mocha and realizing that there's a slight difference between "The man is not going to work" and "The man is not going to be working". The person who made the submission wrote "The man is not going to working", which is obviously wrong, but it is kind of hard to know if she meant "The man isn't going to work" (as in, "That is the wrong person for the job") or "The man isn't going to work" (as in, "The man is not going to work at all today"), or "The man is not going to be working" (as in, "The man is not going to be working at all today"). Sigh, I'm confusing myself here. I know what the difference is, but I'm unable to put it into words. In the future, how would I explain it to people? -=-=- Afr0 Games Project Dollhouse on Github - Please fork! 
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| Mon, 23 May 2011, 00:13 | |
JL235
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'Working' is an action, something you would be doing, whilst 'work' is a place or a destination. Different things are implied depending on if your talking about the action or the place, and I would try to convey this. If you are not going to a place, then it's implied you will be going somewhere else. But it would be perfectly natural to go to work at a later date. i.e. the man is going somewhere else in the mean time, or just in regards to this one conversation. This is partly specific to work, but if someone said to me that they were not working then it implies they do not have a job. If they don't have a job then they will not be working for a while. One implies a specific destination, whilst the other implies job status or what he is up to over a longer period of time. My point here is that there is a subtle subtext, or implication, behind most English (and I'd expect with most languages too). When you say certain things, people make presumptions. |
| Mon, 23 May 2011, 05:08 | |
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Afr0 |
Thanks!
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