bring vs take

Yup, lots of differences... I picked up on Lewis Carol's fetch, and carry... Imagine a dog like me asking a people to fetch... Some people get entirely to irate... Its good English folks...

Yes, in that context you can use either verb. They are often interchangeable, but not always.

What Set said.

I don't agree.

I'll take you to the airport. I'll bring you back from the mall.

There is a subtle difference, but maybe not enough to get exercised about.

I, for my part, haven't said that they are interchangeable in all contexts. But there is an American language usage which you either ignore, or were unaware of: I'll bring you to the airport.--and i suspect that in the British language, just as in the American language, one might say: I'll take you back from the mall.

Well, lets see now. I can only speak BrE, of course.

"I'll bring you to the airport" means (to me) that the speaker was going there anyway.
"I'll take you to the airport", probably not.

But it's rather indistinct. I wish I'd never started this.

Many people think of it this way: , you take "there", you bring "here".

I'll take you (from somewhere else) to the airport.

I arrived at the airport and called my father at his house 50 miles away. I talked to him for a few minutes and found out that a taxi would bring him to meet me.

Naw, Tang started this . . . but we're allowed to play . . . It is regionalism in the U.S., i believe. I was surprised the first time i heard someone say "I

Naw, Tang started this . . . but we're allowed to play . . . It is regionalism in the U.S., i believe. I was surprised the first time i heard someone say "I'll bring you there." But i did understand it right away.

There certainly is that sense, C, but it doesn't have to be the physical place where the speaker is at present.

A: Come to my place on Saturday for dinner.

B: That sounds grand. What should I bring? // What would you like me to bring?

I know, and that is why I enclosed the words "here" and "there" in quote marks, to convey that. Evidently my method of presenting the notion was not as intuitive as I hoped.

I just 'tested' myself and intuitively I say/think and use:

bring (with) (to)
take (from)

In other words, I wouldn't say, 'I'm going to take a cake to her party.'
I'd say, 'I'm going to bring a cake to her party.'

And I wouldn't say, 'Don't forget to bring that book with you when you leave.'
I'd say, 'Don't forget to take that book with you when you leave.'

But in terms of going to an actual place, I find that I use take instead of bring, almost exclusively.
In other words, I'd say, 'I'm taking her to the airport tomorrow,' unless, as McTag said, I'm going anyway and she's coming with me. Then I would say, 'I'm bringing her to the airport with me tomorrow.'

But I do think it's just a matter of personal choice - the difference is so subtle that I don't think either could be classified as right or wrong.

Sorry, C. Missed that nuance.

Actually, Aidan, it's more complicated than personal choice. There are, as McTag noted and Contrex alluded to, nuances that affect our decisions. Having said that, there are also dialectal differences and, it appears, changes happening to the distinctions between bring and take.

How long this has been going on, how widespread it is is all too much to bother with? That would be for a etymologist.

The problem with testing ourselves, not that it's all ways bad and always bad, is that ourselves sometimes don't see all the other potential situations, minor changes that affect our choices.

I think it may be useful to consider the words "bring" and "take" as parts of phrasal verbs - this is how they are commonly encountered and used - bring/take from, to, up, with, off, and so on. Each one has a particular nuance.

There certainly are those nuances, C, but I was more referring to the problematic areas between paired verbs like go/come and of course, bring/take where speaker location or an anticipated future shared location changes the verb we use.

Thanks, JTT. Could you give a few examples?