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I read this question The correct usage of bring vs. take

Andrew said

Which verb you choose reflects what point-of-view from which you imagine the movement. If you picture yourself already at the church, then you can use come. If you picture yourself at another location, moving toward the church, then you use go.

In the same way bring feels like you are coming with the person to the place you want to be.

My question is

How does the speaker imagine the location when choosing "take vs bring"?

I guess the imaginary location is the important place that the sentence focuses on or emphasizes. The place where the speaker is standing might not be the important place.

Say, a dad and son is at home now.

There are 2 scenarios.

The first scenario is that the dad is about to take his son to school in his car

The second scenario is that the son is about to go to school alone.

When does the dad say to his son "don't forget to take the bag to school" and "don't forget to bring the bag to school"?

I guess in both cases, the dad would say "don't forget to bring the bag to school" regardless the location where the dad is standing. That is because the dad imagines "the school" is the important location not "the house".

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    The father would almost certainly say "don't forget to take the bag to school". This is a really interesting question and one which I think is beyond me. As a native speaker, I'm not sure what the rules are here
    – roganjosh
    Commented Nov 10 at 10:15
  • bring would suggest that the bag contained something important to others, like Santa bringing presents. So there would be something in the bag that had significance to others, like a bag of sweets or something. I'm really not sure whether this turn of phrase can be codified
    – roganjosh
    Commented Nov 10 at 10:19
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    You're confusing the issue by including to school if the father is driving his son to school. It's very likely when the father is reminding his son not to forget his bag, the father would be further advanced towards his car at the time, so he'd naturally say "Don't forget to bring your bag". Implying in my direction - it's obviously unnecessary to mention where they're going afterwards, since taking the son to school is the entire reason the father is involved in the first place.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 10 at 10:57
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    ...the father can naturally say "Come with me and don't forget to bring your bag", whereas the mother would say "Go with Dad and don't forget to take your bag". The basic principle is simple, and I don;t see any point in presenting deviously-constructed "edge cases" where it's not clear-cut which terms to use.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 10 at 11:01
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    @roganjosh: No - it's entirely a matter of the relative locations of the speaker and addressee. Introducing complications such as both conversants traveling together to another location isn't helpful.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 10 at 11:06

2 Answers 2

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  • Every morning, I take my daughter to school.
  • Once, I brought my daughter to work with me.

It isn't the type of location that matters, or whether you are accompanying the person at the destination location or not - it is the perspective from which you are speaking that determines which to use.

Broadly, "bring" is used when moving something toward a specific location or person (usually the speaker or listener), while "take" is used when moving something away from a location or person. That's why I might say to my daughter "don't forget to take your bag to school" whilst at home, but once at school her teacher might ask "did you bring your bag?"

So, you don't really need to 'imagine' the place that is not mentioned. It is not necessary to state a destination when taking something - you can just say "I'm taking it away", for example. Likewise, when you are at a location and you say you brought something or someone, you don't need to state where you brought them from. In those contexts, the important thing is that the object of the sentence is leaving/is present, and that the subject took/brought them.

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In some contexts the two words have very similar meanings and are interchangeable . In addition they both have multiple meanings (particularly "take"), not all of which can be swapped. However, if you look them up in a dictionary there are subtle differences even in the narrow meanings used in the question. Using the Cambridge Dictionary as an example
bring

to take or carry someone or something to a place or a person, or in the direction of the person speaking.

take

to move something or someone from one place to another

Take has the implication that you are moving something from A to B whilst bring can additionally imply you are moving it towards the speaker.

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