Speaker 1: Have you ever gone somewhere and then realized you should
have been somewhere else? Or maybe you went somewhere and
now you're trying to explain that, but the grammar just
won't come out right. Don't worry, this happens to a
lot of English learners. So today we're gonna clear it
all up.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from
New York City. And here's your English teacher, Michael.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you John, and thanks everyone. It's Michael
here from Happy English and I help people speak English better.
And this is Happy English Podcast, Episode nine fifty five.
Went gone or been? What's the real difference? Hey, thanks
for tuning in. Let me ask you, have you ever
been to Tokyo? Or or have you gone to Tokyo? Wait?
Maybe you went there in twenty nineteen. Yeah. I know
these words all seem similar, and sometimes even native speakers
mix them up, but there is a pattern, there is
a logic when we use went, gone and been. So
today I'm going to break it down for you in
a clear, simple way with a bunch of examples to
make it all stick. Let's start with went. This one's easy.
It's the past of go we use went when the
action is finished and in the past. For example, you
can say I went to the mall yesterday. That means
you were there yesterday and now you're back. You went,
it's over done. Or like this, they went to Italy
last summer. They took a trip last summer. Simple past.
It's all in the past and we're not talking about
right now. And since it's the simple past tense, when
you say you went somewhere, you need to say when.
That's how the simple past works. I went to the
mall yesterday. They went to Italy last summer. We went
last Friday. All right, Now, let's move on to bin.
That's b E e N, but we usually pronounce it
as bin and not bean. Bin is the past participle
of the B verb. And we use have bin to
talk about experience, especially life experience, like I've been to
eastambul five times. That means during my life up until now,
I had that experience five times and I'm not there now.
Using have been means I just had that experience sometimes before.
Here's another example. Jenny's been to Disneyland twice, maybe when
she was a kid or maybe recently. The point is
she had the experience of being there, and unlike using
the simple past, when you say you have been somewhere,
you don't say when Jenny's been to Disneyland twice. We
know that Jenny had that experience, but we have no
idea when it happened. All we know is that sometime
twice in her life, Jenny has been to Disneyland. Okay,
so what about gone? Gone is the past participle of go?
And here here's the key difference. We have gone when
the person went there and is still there now like, Hey,
where's Chuck. Oh, he's gone to the bank. That means
he left. He's still at the bank and he hasn't
come back yet. He's gone to the bank, he's not here.
Now here's another one. My friend Ed has gone to
Italy for a month. That means he's in Italy now
the trip is happening. He's still there. Compare that to
Ed has been to Italy three times. That's about experience.
You see the difference. So let's break that down. Ed
went to Italy in twenty nineteen. That's one particular trip
he took at a particular time he went there. Ed
has been to Italy three times. That's his experience sometime
in his life. And then Ed has gone to Italy.
This means he's not here, he's still in Italy. That's
how we use gone the trip is in progress. All right.
One more thing. Sometimes in everyday American English conversation, native
speakers bend these rules a little, so you might hear
someone say, oh, I've gone there so many times I
can't count. Of course, grammatically it's better to say I've
been there so many times. Right, that's talking about experience.
But in daily conversation we don't always follow the grammar
rules exactly. I'm sure that happens in your native language
as well. Casual conversation is not always like a textbook.
But keep the rules I talk about here in mind,
especially if you're taking an exam like Toefel or Ailets
and hey, keep in mind the best way to remember
English like this and any other word or phrase in
English is to take that word or phrase, write it
in a sentence that's true for you or true in
your world, and then memorize your sentences. That's how you
build fluency. Hey, thanks for listening, and remember, learning another
language is not easy, but it's not impossible. And I'm
here to help you on your journey.
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English by leading us a review. Get English, Get happy,
Happy English.
Speaker 1: Yes,