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Question If it rains tomorrow, I --- home

hirashin

Sempai
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8 Apr 2004
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Dear native English speakers,
I have a little question.

Which sentence(s) do you use?

If it rains tomorrow, .
(a) I'm staying home.
(b) I'm going to stay home.
(c) I'll stay home.
(d) I'll be home.
(e) I'll be staying home.
(f) I'll be going to stay home.

Thanks in advance.

Hirashin
 
@joadbres was so kind as to inform me that this thread could not be opened due to underscores used in the thread title. I have therefore replaced them with hyphens which seems to have resolved the issue. Thanks for reporting this.
 
Thanks, joadbres and thomas for correcting my mistake, I didn't know you can't use underscores in titles. I'm sorry.

And thanks for the help, Lothor. I'm surprised to read your answer.
 
Do you understand why (f) is wrong?

A future event can be expressed with "will [verb]" (e.g. "I will eat") or "[be-verb] going to [verb]" (e.g. "I am going to eat"), but not both.

Your sentence: "I'll be going to stay home." is equivalent to "I will be going to stay home." This uses both future grammatical constructs combined together, making it clearly incorrect.
 
joadbres, if my memory serves right, you can use the patter "will be going to do something". I think someone told me so in this site.

I searched it and got this one. The writer seems to live in Hawaii. What do you think? Does it sound strange?

Hi, I will be going to get a Sak Yant done in November. I would prefer to have it done in white ink. Does anyone know if they have white ink, or if it is best to buy a bottle and bring my own?
I have e-mailed some Arjans with private studios and it doesn't seem to be an issue, but not sure about the Wat.
Thank you!

(from here: Hi, I will be going to get a Sak Yant done in... - Wat Bang Phra Temple)
 
In that sentence, "going" is used in the sense of going somewhere, not to indicate future tense. It's not the same thing.
 
But it seems to me that it shows "will be going to get ...", not "will be going to [place]"
 
I agree with you Hirashin that that last sentence is of the "will be going to (do)" variety, but as Joadbres and Lothor said previously that structure is simply wrong. Whoever used that sentence must use it colloquially in a very specific location but it is not standard English,and when you think about it, illogical.
Did you question them about it at the time?
 
But it seems to me that it shows "will be going to get ...", not "will be going to [place]"

I agree with you Hirashin that that last sentence is of the "will be going to (do)" variety

No. Wrong. The thread is about Wat Bang Phra temple, a monastery in Thailand. The OP of that thread is explaining that she "will be going [to Wat Bang Phra temple] to get a Sak Yant [tattoo] done in November."
 
Joad, firstly you really need to learn how to speak to people properly. Do you really go around saying "No. Wrong." to people in real life?

Secondly the original writer may have intended, or have been thinking of, "will be going (to Wat Bang temple) (in order) to get a tattoo but they wrote, and initiated the thread, with "Hi, I will be going to get a Sak Yant done in November" which in writing is wrong, and looks horrendous. In speech you may get away with it by pauses, inflection, intonation etc, but written down it is simply wrong.
 
the original writer may have intended, or have been thinking of, "will be going (to Wat Bang temple) (in order) to get a tattoo but they wrote, and initiated the thread, with "Hi, I will be going to get a Sak Yant done in November" which in writing is wrong, and looks horrendous.

That comment is posted on tripadvisor, a site about tourist destinations, under a heading with the name of the temple. From that context, it is quite obvious what is meant.

Do you really go around saying "No. Wrong." to people in real life?

Sometimes. But only when I feel the situation warrants it.
 
It can be obvious what someone means even if they have used wrong grammar. You can't headline a thread "Toyko" and then write "I am go next year" and justify it by saying it's obvious what you meant.
 
Sorry to interrupt you, but would you tell me whether native speakers ever use the pattern "will be going to do something" ?
 
Sorry to interrupt you, but would you tell me whether native speakers ever use the pattern "will be going to do something" ?

We already told you:

A future event can be expressed with "will [verb]" (e.g. "I will eat") or "[be-verb] going to [verb]" (e.g. "I am going to eat"), but not both.

Your sentence: "I'll be going to stay home." is equivalent to "I will be going to stay home." This uses both future grammatical constructs combined together, making it clearly incorrect.
 
Thanks. I thought someone told me that the pattern could be used in some case. It seems I was mistaken in memory.
 
It can be obvious what someone means even if they have used wrong grammar. You can't headline a thread "Toyko" and then write "I am go next year" and justify it by saying it's obvious what you meant.

Yes, that's true, but I do not agree with your contention that the Sak Yant sentence is grammatically problematic.

Here's another sentence:

"I just got tickets for Hamilton; I will be going to see it in November."

Do you think that this grammar is "simply wrong" or "looks horrendous"?
 
Err, yes. That sentence is back to the original "will be" + "going to (do)", which we all know we don't use, just as you quoted 3 posts above.
 
Err, yes. That sentence is back to the original "will be" + "going to (do)", which we all know we don't use, just as you quoted 3 posts above.

No, it's not. It is implied that the speaker will be travelling to another city to see the play.
 
You're clutching at straws now. There is no implication whatsoever that the speaker is travelling anywhere to see it, And even if there was, the problem, just like the earlier temple sentence, is that combining "will be" with "going to (do) will always sound like "will be going to do", which is wrong, if you omit the object. You can't get away with removing, say "to Tokyo", from "I'll be going to Tokyo to see my family next month" and not have it sound unnatural and wrong.
 
I think the reason that (f) is incorrect in your sentence hirashin is that stay home is seen as an action and not a place. "I'll be going to the grocery store." For example is fine since going in this case it is an action to a place. Where in your sentence a native speaker would see it as an action to an action, which doesn't make sense.
 
Where is the implication?

We have already established and agreed that combining "will" and "going to", when both are used equivalently to denote the future tense, is a clear and blatant grammatical error. So, if a native English speaker who we have no reason to doubt has a proper command of English grammar, utters / writes a sentence such as the Sak Yant one, or my Hamilton example, then there is only one possible interpretation that makes sense: "going" refers to a physical act of travel.

Apparently, these types of sentences, in which the destination is only implied or indirectly mentioned, sound awkward and incorrect to you. They do not to me. They may not be an ideal form of writing, but they are valid, to me. When I read the Sak Yant sentence for the first time, I was confused for a few seconds, because I was interpreting "going to" as a future tense indicator, based on what we had already been discussing in this thread. However, I quickly realized that interpretation was incorrect, gleaned the situational context, and effortlessly understood exactly what the author was saying. Once I had done that, the sentence was clear to me, and in no way did I feel it was grammatically incorrect. Obviously, you feel otherwise.
 
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