Most of us (whose mother tongue is not English) have been learning English for years.
But sometimes there are questions to which we don’t know how to explain. What questions am I talking about? For example, everyone knows that ‘take your time‘ is polite, right. But the question is: why?
A. Example 1: Take a seat.
When a woman asks you to ‘take a seat’, do you really TAKE the seat with your hands? No, of course not! What do I mean? I mean when your friend says ‘Take the handbag for me’, you will carry the handbag, right?
But it is a different ‘story’ for ‘take a seat’. I guess nobody will really hold or carry a chair on hearing ‘take a seat’, right?
Why? There is a mismatch between the verb ‘take’ and the action ‘sit’, as shown below: Take VS Sit.
VERB ACTION
What do I mean by ‘mismatch‘? Move on to example 2.
B. Example 2: Do something
VERB ACTION
do do
In this example, there is a match between ‘do’ and ‘do’. That is ‘the verb = the action‘. In this case, it is an order (impolite).
There are lots of examples regarding this ‘match’:
- Give me the details. ( at your office)
- Take that chewing gum out of your mouth. (at your school)
C. A Little Theory
So what is the little theory?
When there is a match between the verb and the real action, it is impolite, as shown in ‘Verb = Action —————> impolite‘.
So according to the above little theory, ‘take your time‘ is polite.
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Pic Sources
http://www.flickr.com/photos/salty_soul/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kudumomo/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aheram/
