Re: I have been in /at the library.
- From: datere <ee123456etw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:49:28 -0700 (PDT)
On 7月22日, 下午10時14分, Athel Cornish-Bowden <athel...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2008-07-22 15:43:49 +0200, datere <ee123456...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
I have been in the library.
I have been at the library.
I think those sentences both suggest "I am still in the library now.",
am I right?
No, you're not. They don't exclude that meaning but they don't suggest
it either. If followed by "since 9 o'clock this morning" they might
imply that you're still there.
I have been in Japan.
I think that sentence suggest "I am still in Japan now.", am I right?
No, unless followed by something like "since January". Speaking for
myself, I have been in Japan, but I'm not there now.
From your subject line I thought you would be asking whether "in" was
better or worse than "at". Both can be used, though "in" is probably
more common, especially if you are thinking of the lmibrary as a place
where you might be rather than as a place where you might be doing
something. In general prepositions are the most difficult words to
translate between languages because their meanings rarely correspond
exactly with similar words in other languages. This is true for
languages as closely related as French and Spanish (e.g. {pour, par}
and {para, por}) so it must surely be worse for translating from a
Asian language into English.
--
athel
Thank you for your answer, Anthel.
.
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- From: datere
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