Re: I have been in /at the library.

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.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Turkic Languages in a Nutshell
    ... etc." are known in the modern Turkic languages too. ... and the sources I cited are not Kazakh sources but western ones! ... cf., for example, the mention of the qazaq years ... not yet the exclusively military meaning which it had afterwards. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: A Slavonian name
    ... pronounciation. ... Not sure about other slavic languages, but in Polish it does not depend on ... I additionally suggest that everyone look to the meaning of the name ... <slav> is a root from which there are literally ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Verbose functional languages?
    ... If the meaning is all tied up in subtle ... If the writer is attempting to communicate, ... cooks by just working down the receipt. ... dominate the look of program texts in other languages. ...
    (comp.lang.functional)
  • Re: Genetics as a *FORMAL* Language System
    ... the word in languages has evolved ... >Human languages can and do evolve because of the intelligence of humans ... >languages and new functions/meanings for new words based strictly upon ... The ratio between meaning and use? ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: A Slavonian name
    ... Other Western Slavs would spell it Boleslav with identical ... pronounciation. ... Not sure about other slavic languages, but in Polish it does not depend on ... I additionally suggest that everyone look to the meaning of the name ...
    (sci.lang)
Loading