English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Recently, I have come across the phrase "gonna go".
What is the difference between all these sentences?
I am gonna go get some ice cream.
I am going to go get some ice cream.
I am going to get some ice cream.
Are they all same or is there any difference?
What does the sentence "I am gonna go .... " mean? Does this give a future feeling like “I will get some ice cream tomorrow” or “I am going to (on the way) get ice cream”?
Gonna is an extremely common and normal, but degraded, pronunciation of "going to." So the first two sentences are identical except for pronunciation. The third sentence is also correct, but omitting "go" reduces the emphasis of going (somewhere) to get the ice cream.
The pronunciation "gonna" is so widespread that it has found its way into informal written English, as in chat messages. But it isn't actually a word and should never be used in any kind of formal writing.
"Gonna go" is a dialectical way of saying "going to go." It means exactly the same thing, the only difference is in the pronunciation/elocution. It would not be used in formal written English, but it may be written that way to convey the informality of a conversation.
"Going to" means almost the same thing as "going to go" in this context. "Going to go" implies a farther distance (e.g. out of the house) compared to simply "going to" (perhaps only as far as the freezer).
