Which is correct:
I am late to class OR I am late for class?
I am late to class OR I am late for class?
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For or To
technically, "late" is an adjective, so i think "i was late to class" is not correct because "i was to class" isn't either.
then again, never mind, "i was for class" doesn't sound right either really. i guess you can't gauge it this way.
For me, the two are completely interchangeable, and if one replaced "was" with "came", I would actually then strongly favor "to".
>>technically, "late" is an adjective, so i think "i was late to class" is not correct because "i was to class" isn't either.<< The "technically" part you speak of here is pure prescriptivism, which has no bearing when it comes to actual real-world speech patterns and not the arbitrary edicts of grammarians.
>>The "technically" part you speak of here is pure prescriptivism, which has no bearing when it comes to actual real-world speech patterns and not the arbitrary edicts of grammarians.<<
i do agree that the "technically" part which i spoke of was prescriptivism's doctrine, but i wouldn't go so far as to suggest that they are arbitrary edicts of grammarians - that'd be way too much a generalization if it is the realm of philosophy of language that you want to go into rather than just lingustics'.
Google search on "late to class" returns 151,000 thousand results. "Late for class" gives 161,000. So, I maintain either is perfectly fine.
Haiii, sou desu!!! That's right, the two are interchangeable, and I hear people using both all the time.
Just a random piece of trivia... In Hong Kong, the urban MTR railway service uses the announcement: "The train to ______ is arriving" whereas the suburban KCR railway service announcement states: "The train for ______ is arriving" And just for the record, the MTR announcer has a perfect RP accent whereas the KCR announcer has some sort of robotic Chinese accent ^.~ |