Glossary entry (derived from question below)
English term or phrase:
at the home
English answer:
at the children's home
Added to glossary by
literary
Nov 22, 2007 09:36
16 yrs ago
English term
at the home
English
Art/Literary
General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters
"When I was a small child, at the home,"
Would you understand it as a children's home? Or simply his family home? I don't have real context, except that someone used to tell him fairy tales "at the home".
Would you understand it as a children's home? Or simply his family home? I don't have real context, except that someone used to tell him fairy tales "at the home".
Responses
+6
6 mins
Marie-Hélène Hayles
Native in English
&
English
medicine - chemistry - pharmaceuticals
Native in: English
Works in: Italian to English, English
Related KudoZ points
:
12
Selected
It sounds wrong to me
There are two possibilities here: you can either say "at home" (= at my house) or "at the home of X" (= at X's house). I can't think of any circumstance in which we would say "at the home" unless followed by "of X".
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Note added at 7 mins (2007-11-22 09:43:54 GMT)
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Except possibly your own suggestion of "at the children's home", but in this case it must have been clearly specified at some point beforehand or it wouldn't be understood.
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Note added at 7 mins (2007-11-22 09:43:54 GMT)
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Except possibly your own suggestion of "at the children's home", but in this case it must have been clearly specified at some point beforehand or it wouldn't be understood.
Peer comment(s):
| neutral |
Cilian O'Tuama
: nothing wrong with "at the home" when referring to e.g. remand home, old-folks home etc.
3 mins
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yes you're right, but IMO you'd have to specify at some point what kind of home you were talking about.
|
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| agree |
Jonathan MacKerron
: your second suggestion is very plausible, though the asker needs to provide more details
3 mins
|
| neutral |
Harry Borsje
: Given the context 'someone', which is unlikely to be a direct relative of this person, and assuming the author is a native English speaker (why else write English literature?), IMO something like a children's home should be the correct interpretation.
17 mins
|
|
I think you're probably right, but I personally would do a double-take if I read this sentence and didn't already know that the speaker had been in a children's home (and would probably go back and check to see if I'd missed this information).
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| agree |
Patricia Townshend (X)
: It certainly sounds as if it's an institution of some kind but, as others have said, it should have been mentioned earlier to make any clear sense. Even if not, I'd still go with this interpretation.
1 hr
|
| agree |
Carol Gullidge
: yes! "at/in the home", referring to, eg, a children's home would only work if the reader was already aware of such a place. Otherwise it would need glossing/explanation at 1st reference
1 hr
|
| agree |
Mehmet Hascan
: a children’s home
1 hr
|
| agree |
Alfa Trans (X)
11 hrs
|
| agree |
Cristina Santos
13 hrs
|
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
Comment: "Thanks everyone!"
+3
44 mins
not for points, background
According to this website, the text is by an artist called Neil Gaiman:
http://strangerquark.com/2007/10/30/those-three-words-are-sa...
Assuming that is the text we're talking about here, it's a fictional love letter by a fictional street performer. This street performer doesn't seem to be an English native speaker, as attested by the following excerpt:
"I write this in English, your language, a language I also speak. My English is good. I was some years ago in England and in Scotland."
Since no children's home is mentioned anywhere in the letter, we can't really know for sure. Either the "the" is meant to be a mistake by a non-native speaker of English or it's meant to make us wonder whether the street performer grew up in a children's home. I'm leaning towards the former.
http://strangerquark.com/2007/10/30/those-three-words-are-sa...
Assuming that is the text we're talking about here, it's a fictional love letter by a fictional street performer. This street performer doesn't seem to be an English native speaker, as attested by the following excerpt:
"I write this in English, your language, a language I also speak. My English is good. I was some years ago in England and in Scotland."
Since no children's home is mentioned anywhere in the letter, we can't really know for sure. Either the "the" is meant to be a mistake by a non-native speaker of English or it's meant to make us wonder whether the street performer grew up in a children's home. I'm leaning towards the former.
Note from asker:
| OK, this very text. But I don't see any grammar or other errors there. |
Peer comment(s):
| neutral |
Harry Borsje
: Quite the stalker, isn't he? It seems very natural to me to see him referring to an orphanage in Italy, probably during or shortly after WWII (his black dragon)
22 mins
|
| agree |
Marie-Hélène Hayles
: To literary: actually the whole text quoted by Jalapeno is clearly "non-native".
48 mins
|
| agree |
Ken Cox
: thanks for providing the missing context, and I agree with Marie-Hélène's comment.
53 mins
|
| agree |
Sheila Wilson
: I agree to - the sentence 'I was ...' is not natural English, so we'd have to be mind-readers to know the answer
2 hrs
|
5 hrs
the foster home, the children's home
The background - a street performer - remembering fairy tales to him when he was a child at the home, leads me to believe, (well in fact it was my thought even before reading the context) that this fellow grew up in a home that is not his family home, but rather an orphanage, a facility for children whose parents are not available to provide a family home, either because they are deceased, imprisoned, or otherwise absent.
Discussion