Well it took me borrowing one video game to learn that lesson. "No, you must've borrowed it to someone else" when I asked.
First game I bought for my own pocket money, which at time, in Poland, was a lot for a kid as it was full price title, Baldur's Gate 1 in nice box with manual and a map, and dubbed gloriously with then-radio/TV stars, hell, the narrator voice was better than original. Needless to say I was pretty salty.
Only for your edification, as your English is 1/0 (infinitely) better than my Polish. I believe you meant "lending / lent" in place of "borrowing / borrowed." We separate the words, so "to borrow" is to temporarily take the item, "to lend" is to temporarily give the item.
In Spanish they are the same word also -- "alquilar" -- "to rent" and "to rent out".
Do any linguistics geeks reading have a word I can google for this phenomenon? That is, a word that means something like "a word or phrase that is bidirectional in one language but part of a unidirectional pair in another"
I wonder if this is due to the language that whatever large immigrant populations in Minnesota spoke. I know Minnesota had a lot of Northern European immigrants, and another commenter in this thread says German doesn't distinguish borrow/lend.
I don't have an answer but English LOVES preposition-attached verbs.
You can use lent and borrowed in both directions (I lent X to him; he lent X to me -- I borrowed X from him; he borrowed X from me) so the main difference is not in whether the verbs can be used bidirectionally, but in how you indicate the direction.
I suspect Spanish (and maybe Polish) disambiguate in different ways, but disambiguate I'm sure they do!
> You can use lent and borrowed in both directions (I lent X to him; he lent X to me -- I borrowed X from him; he borrowed X from me)
Those are both unidirectional: lent is always “the (possibly implicit) direct object moves from the subject to the indirect object prefaced with ‘to’” while borrowed is always “the (possibly implicit) direct object moves to the subject from the indirect object prefaced with ‘from’”.
Birectional would be where the subject could be the source or recipient depending on, e.g., the preposition used to relate the other party as the indirect object.
In your examples the direction seems to be the same. Or, more specifically, in regards to the verb the direction is the same.
idk if there are regional exceptions, but in general borrow and lend seem more akin to learn and teach, respectively. The have an implicit direction: (from, in the case of borrow; to in the case of lend).
I teached something from you today or I will learn you calculus in extracurricular classes don't work.
In Spanish it is disambiguated in a similar way as you were mentioning (to me, to you)
"Alquilo" translates literally to rent, so not really the same:
- Me alquilas un piso. (you rent me a flat)
- Te alquilo un piso. (I rent you a flat)
I think a better translation to borrow/lend is "prestar/dejar:
- Me prestas/dejas un lápiz. (you lend me a pencil/I borrow a pencil from you)
- Te presto/dejo un lápiz. (I lend you a pencil/You borrow a pencil from me)
True but in some parts of the uk (north/midlands) 'lend' can mean borrow. As kids I'd be asked by someone at school 'can I lend your pencil?' (= can I borrow your pencil). Dunno if they use that any more though. Was decades ago.
It can go both ways as slang. I've got one friend and one relative, both in London their whole lives, who'll say "can you borrow me (something they want)".
I actually don't think I've ever heard a native English (as a first language) speaker do it the way you recall - using lend when they mean borrow - I wonder if that's just coincidence, or if one way is more common up north and the other down south?
I have two more. I don't think any English speaker really cares about them, but they're fun.
One: you "bring" things toward the speaker, and "take" them elsewhere. So "don't forget to bring your umbrella!" is incorrect.
Two: "like" compares, and "as" joins independent clauses. So "I wish I could communicate like tptacek does" should be "I wish I could communicate as tptacek does." A correct use of like might be "You, like tptacek, comment insightfully." A famous example of a controversial misuse of "like" was the 1970s slogan "Nobody can do it like McDonald's can." It should be "... as McDonald's can." When that came out, grammar aficionados lost their minds.
Yeah, I thought about that case, but I still think the grammar pedants would mark the answer wrong. Not that I was there when they invented the word "bring," but I imagine they decided the specific word for movement toward the speaker was useful to make the statement more precise. I feel like allowing "bring" here just because the speaker happened to be at the destination where the listener was planning to go would let the exception swallow the rule. (To be clear, that's already happened in common English; I'd even venture that "don't forget to take your umbrella" sounds a little bit stiff, even though it's more correct.)
I lent about $25 to someone when I was in college. It was a lot of money for me at the time, you could buy 5 day's worth of food with it or pay 1/5th of the rent for my room (yeah, some places in Europe were really cheap in the aughts). He promised that he would pay me back.
After a while he asked me for some more money, about $5 and swore he'd pay back really soon. I was so shocked that I broke all contact with that guy and never saw him again.
> Carmack, it seems, was comfortable with not being paid back.
That's not how I read the tweet, at all.
> It was a learning experience for me, calibrating some general people behavior. I don’t think anyone intended to not pay me back, but things often just don’t work out the way you plan
How do you read the tweet? It seems pretty clear that he knew that getting paid back wasn't very highly probable, and he learned about how recipients handle that.
More to the point, Carmack was comfortable - had a house and was able to put food on the table for his loved ones - without being paid back. It's possible that, contrary to what that tweet says, Carmack demanded (his) money (back). By Western measures, however, he's still comfortable without being paid back.
First game I bought for my own pocket money, which at time, in Poland, was a lot for a kid as it was full price title, Baldur's Gate 1 in nice box with manual and a map, and dubbed gloriously with then-radio/TV stars, hell, the narrator voice was better than original. Needless to say I was pretty salty.
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