Timeline for "The books arrived TO you" or "The books arrived AT you"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
22 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 31, 2021 at 16:13 | answer | added | Jason Goemaat | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 31, 2021 at 13:33 | comment | added | Robbie Goodwin | “… with you…” does admit the interpretation of going off somewhere and bringing the books with you; it doesn’t imply that… the freedom of English sentence structure has a dangerous downside. It does look like direct translation, which is why I think it important to give a direct translation as well as the colloquial… why the direct one won’t work, is often more widely useful that what the colloquial happens to be. Italian “tiramisu”: literally, “pull me up”; in English, “pick me up. Oddly, the same route gives French “tirez” for “pull (the trigger)” matching English “fire (the weapon)” | |
| Mar 31, 2021 at 7:19 | comment | added | Stian | What a strange use of passive. Rewrite the sentence. | |
| Mar 31, 2021 at 5:40 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | Interestingly, if the verb get had been used, the phrasing would have worked. The books got to you (in time) | |
| Mar 31, 2021 at 5:34 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | @RobbieGoodwin as anyone will have noticed, the question has attracted a lot of attention. Have you wondered why? Well, the OP's sentence looks like a word for word translation of the sentence in their native language. For instance, in Italian we could say "I libri sono arrivati a te." and many an Italian learner would translate the "a te" as at you in English. The sentence, which is so simple in one's mother tongue, sounds unnecessarily awkward and "off" in English. | |
| Mar 31, 2021 at 0:06 | comment | added | user2357112 | @RobbieGoodwin: "With you" would imply that you went somewhere and brought the books with you, rather than the books getting shipped to your address. | |
| Mar 30, 2021 at 21:15 | history | edited | Virtuous Legend | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 30, 2021 at 21:04 | comment | added | Robbie Goodwin | Neither, never. The books arrived "with you" would often be acceptable but not either example. For you, why is the much more simple "The books arrived…" not sufficient? | |
| Mar 30, 2021 at 20:33 | answer | added | Mark Williams | timeline score: 8 | |
| Mar 30, 2021 at 18:41 | comment | added | TonyK | Both are unambiguously wrong. "Your books arrived" would be normal . | |
| Mar 30, 2021 at 18:16 | answer | added | Kirk Woll | timeline score: 5 | |
| Mar 30, 2021 at 15:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglishLL/status/1376912101772566529 | ||
| Mar 30, 2021 at 13:52 | history | edited | Virtuous Legend | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 30, 2021 at 13:42 | history | edited | Virtuous Legend | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 30, 2021 at 8:19 | comment | added | JBentley | Both sound very unnatural. | |
| Mar 30, 2021 at 8:15 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | "For" is one of the few prepositions that would there (assuming you don't change the structure, as suggested in the answers), but we'd need a bit more context to know whether that would make sense for your purposes. It basically means it was addressed to you, and, unlike "at", often very specifically means you haven't actually gotten it yet (e.g. "The books arrived for you while you were out"). | |
| Mar 30, 2021 at 3:59 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Mar 29, 2021 at 21:04 | answer | added | Ben Kovitz | timeline score: 37 | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 20:58 | comment | added | Andrew | Among other options, I think you can say "The books (have) arrived." (no object) or "The books have been/were delivered to you/your home." | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 20:45 | history | edited | Andrew | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 29, 2021 at 20:21 | answer | added | Colin Fine | timeline score: 3 | |
| Mar 29, 2021 at 19:57 | history | asked | Virtuous Legend | CC BY-SA 4.0 |