Bring is usually towards the place mentioned, Take is away.
“Bring it here”, “Take it away”
Sometimes the distinction is not so clear. “What are you taking ?” Is that away from home, or to the party ? So maybe either will do there.
“What are you taking/bringing to the party ?”- that depends if you’re talking from the point of view of “you” or “the party”
Pears poached in red wine and cinnamon in a crunchy walnut pastry case.
Anyway, here’s what Webster says:
[quote]Generally, take means to move something from a place close at hand to a place relatively further away; bring means to move something to a position closer at hand. This distinction is not always so clear, however, and often it doesn’t matter which verb we use, simply because the distinction noted above is either unclear or unimportant. For instance, in the sentence, “We are going to visit our grandparents, and we are going to bring/take our cousins with us,” we could use either verb.
[/quote] http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/notorious/take.htm
The choice of “bring” or “take” would depend on how the scenario is conceptualized in the mind of the speaker. When you refer to an event such as this one you imagine the situation. If the speaker was imagining the act of arriving then “bring” would be more appropriate and would more likely conjure up in the mind of the listener the act of arriving at a place with object in hand. This is perhaps the more likely scenario and if that indeed was the speakers intention for whatever reason (perhaps because he wondered whether he should buy more of something for example) then bring is more accurate. If, on the other hand, the speaker was imagining the act of leaving a place with something (lets say beer) then he would most likely say “take”. He might say “What are you taking to the party?” in the hope that it is not the beer because that would mean he had to go out and get more. Not a very definitive answer I realize but I can say that your boss is wrong in his absolute insistence on “take.” Please tell me he is not a native speaker of English. Either way you cannot let anybody “tell” you what to say in a situation like this. Especially if they are not a native speaker, if it is something as simple as this, and ESPECIALLY if they are wrong. Make sure your Taiwanese bosses know who the authority is or you will never hear the end of this kind of nonsense.
Good question by the way. A lot of students are confused about “take”, “bring” and “go get”.
For those not familiar with the show. Father Ted is set in Ireland.
If you search for the instances of ‘bring’ on the page you will find both bring-here “How about we bring Chris over here for a while.” and bring-there “Let’s bring him home Dougal.” (Interestingly later on, take-there appears too “I-I-I-I’d better take him home.” with the same meaning.)
Also near the beginning there is the quote “Or take you on a trip into darkest Africa. (Dougal plays a sound of a toilet flushing) Or bring you into a spooky castle on a stormy night.” Where, to me, it seems that ‘bring’ was used in the second sentence to avoid repletion of words/ideas and as a natural compliment to the first sentence, rather than to convey direction.
