You’re thinking in terms of location, rather than state-of-being. “I’m home” is your status.
“I’m driving, I am bored, I’m safe, I am away”… None of those sound weird, do they? This, combined with the more technical grammar rules others have commented…
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Home is the adjective. It’s a state of being.
Many times I’ll walk in the door but need to log into work, and I’ll say to my wife “I’m not home yet”. As in, my external responsibilities are not completed and I am not available. When I’m available to my family or to relax, I have then become “home”.
Edit: I meant adverb. It modified the state of being. Like being “away”.
In this usage, “home” is an adverb / adverbial! It is a preposition being used adverbially.
I’m going in. I’m going home.
Send it out. Send it home.
Run away! Run home!
For me it always just felt very close to “I am here” / “I am done” / “I am late” / “I am fine” — not as description of a place but state.
All the quirks, weirdnesses and exceptions are the best / most fun parts of any language. Close second, how it constantly evolves and where the words originated from.
I had to explain to a friend recently why
“I’m at Steve’s house”
Was fine but
“I’m in Steve’s house”
Was weird. Like, get out of there before you get arrested.
That reminds me that my sixth grade teacher was adamant that 'I am going over Steve’s house" meant that one was visiting the house, not flying over it.
I would sure appreciate that explanation. Like I broadly get that ‘at’ implies you are present with the person’s knowledge while ‘in’ implies you are there without their knowledge but I would like an explanation of why the meanings are implied as such
I’m at Steve’s house.
I’m in Steve’s backyard.
I’m at Steve’s backyard barbecue.
Yeah, English is pretty f’d up.
Because home isn’t a normal location, it’s “home”.
It’s where you’re from.
Like, no one says “I’m house” or “I’m apartment building” because it’s not about the physical structure. It’s about being where the heart is. How many pillows do Grandmas need to stitch that on?
Your instincts are right in that English as a second language is tricksy and annoying. The “I’m home” thing never occured to me, but there’s plenty of stumbling blocks. They’re, their, and there. Idioms like “piece of cake”. It’s a long list. Not the hardest of all languages to learn, but it is confusing in places.
“I am House.” - Some TV doctor
Some people called Romans, they go the house?
No, actually it’s not even tickling any resemblance of confusion
The concept of multiple languages seems to confuse so many monolinguists.
It’s not intuitive if you don’t know several languages that some things in language are just how any human communicate, such as skipping words and stuff.
Same
You’re clearly fluent if you describe “tickling any resemblance” of an effect. Learners would likely say something akin to “make me confused” or similar or less.
Maybe, I don’t know what counts as fluent. But I am learning
No, the way people say it makes it obvious that it’s a set phrase. Like in Japanese they say “tadaima” and people reply “okaeri” and you just know that it’s a thing and don’t question it much. It’s until much later when people point it out that you go, ohh yeahhh.
When was the meeting where we decided not to say “I’m post office” because I use that phrase daily?
I used to be pre office. I still am, but now I’m post office too.
Don’t British people say in hospital or something?
“In hospice?” Which I’ve heard here, too and just refers to the type of care they receive.
We have that here too. I found what I was referring to:
In British English, the word hospital can appear as a noncount noun, without the article a or the before it, in certain phrases:
(British English):He’s in hospital.= (American English):He’s in a hospital or He’s in the hospital.
I want to add Canadian English goes with the latter too.
Until you realize that home is also an adverb. Just to, y’know, drive home the point
Is it truly an adverb, though. Would that statement be considered proper English? It is a colloquialism, or some might say a metaphor, but is it considered an appropriate use of the English language to use that type of phrase? I could just imagine someone’s English professor returning an essay with a red line through that phrase.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/home
Home is a noun, adverb, adjective, and a verb. Yes the statement is proper English.
It’s not any of what you said. It’s an adv. according to many a dictionary. I doubt that any of my pals would call that wrong or anti–English class.
(From today on, I aim to not say the fifthglyph for all 2nd posts to promote !avoid5@sh.itjust.works)
honestly I never even noticed that. But I did learn English like a native would - through near total immersion, and mainly monolingually instead of through translation. Whenever I learnt something new I was just like “alright so that’s how I say the thing”.
To be perfectly honest, if your language teacher points out that “I’m home” is a unique case I’d say that’s a bad move, because now you’ll second guess yourself every time you want to say it & might make mistakes you otherwise wouldn’t.
This goes for all linguistic quirks imo, so many “watch carefully for those little bits” that instead of helping you learn they make you confused. Imagine learning about through thought though taught tough throughout thorough all in one day because “they’re all very similar but very different! we put them all in the same spot to make sure you don’t get them confused :)” it’s a mental cluster fuck trying to remember which is which when you have all of them in one spot, the way to learn them is to have examples of their uses scattered across the ciriculum so that when you encounter one you can commit it to memory before you see the next one
It’s not amazing that you understand the omission of an unnecessary word
where did i say it was?
It’s not amazing for anyone to understand if you leave out an unnecessary word. It happens in all languages, even those not connected to civilization at large because humans intuitively understand. You don’t need to explain how you immerse yourself in language or anything, it’s impossible to misunderstand the omission of an unnecessary word
I simply gave context to how I learn English, nowhere did I say that it’s amazing that I understood an omission of a word, in fact I said that I never noticed how it was omitted until it was pointed out. What are you on about?
I am telling you something Why are you so defensive? You’re entire argument implies that it is interesting that omitting a word can be understood
You misunderstood what I wrote and are arguing with me about something I didn’t say, you made up that implication yourself
What did I misunderstand?
This happens a lot in English. Probably other languages too.
“Love you.”
“See ya.”
“Be right back.”
And more!
It wouldn’t surprise me if this subject-dropping was introduced into English by non-native speakers? English is actually a bit peculiar as languages go in its wanting to put a subject in practically every sentence. It’s raining. It’s about time. What is the “it” here referring to? Linguists will tell you you’re looking at a subject placeholder that doesn’t convey any special meaning but simply completes the grammar. And people learning English from other languages that don’t need this fail to see the point. So they just start saying “About time we dropped that stupid it!” and then even native speakers start thinking yeah, why not ditch the subject if we don’t really need it?
It’s a thing that happens in most languages that create rules about sentence structure.
Basically, really important or frequently used statements will break the rules to… Save time.
Can you imagine that scene from scene from half bake, instead of “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you’re cool, fuck you, I’m out!”
You’d get “I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I will fuck you, I think that you are cool, I will fuck you, I will leave now.”
Something like ‘Im going to the store’ only becomes ‘going to the store!’ in contexts of urgency and familiarity, like yelling it on the way out the door to your spouse. You wouldn’t likely do that in your workplace.
https://youtube.com/shorts/5CceU7oR22s
This kids great if you like language nonsense.
Yeah, one context in which a subject is not required even with proper English grammar is in imperatives, which makes sense given the implied urgency. If “Watch out!” had to be something more long-winded like “You must watch out!” you’d probably be dead.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/shorts/5CceU7oR22s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
“I’m home” is also something say when they arrive in their birth country or birth city/village. It’s different from “I’m at home”.
