Echobeats wrote:
Dingbats wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:
"He went home" originally was a proper answer for "Whither (i.e. which way) did he go?". It was not originally a proper answer for "Where (i.e to what place) did he go?"
Is this really how the distinction between "where" and "whither" worked? In the related Swedish, which retains the contrast (at least in the standard), both of those questions would use the equivalent of "whither", since both ask for a direction. "Where" would mean something like "In which place did he walk around without going anywhere?" (but is of course in practice just nothing you would say).
Yeah,
whither means "where to". I've never heard of a difference between different kinds of "where to".
AIUI you're saying something like:
here/there/where was locative/adessive (location);
hither/thither/whither was allative (destination or goal);
hence/thence/whence was ablative (source).
But AIUI English actually used here/there/where for destinations and goals, and used hither/thither/whither for directions.
I could be wrong.
[EDIT]: In which case I should have said "whither" and "whitherward", rather than "where" and "whither". That is, the original "went" was an answer to "whitherward". [/EDIT]
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