Bring or Take: What’s the difference?

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The difference between bring and take, two important verbs, is often confusing. The main point is that you should be looking at these verbs in reference to your or another speaker’s position. When the speaker wants something to come to him, he can ask another person to “bring” that object. A woman hosting a dinner party might ask someone to bring an appetizer. The speaker refers to her seat, or wherever he is holding dinner as a seat near her. Her appetizer will be brought to her.

This is where the difference between bring and take gets a bit confusing. From the point of view of the person asked to bring an appetizer by the woman hosting the dinner, she is bringing the appetizer away from herself (the place of the dinner). When asked to bring an appetizer to an event, you might tell someone else that you’re bringing an appetizer to dinner. In many cases, you don’t bring an appetizer until you arrive at the guest’s destination and announce, “I brought appetizer.” You don’t want to use, “I got the appetizer,” when you get to the guest’s destination, unless you want to worry him or her that you’re stealing their food. However, you might say to the host, if you’re both in the kitchen, “I took the appetizer into the dining room,” as you brought it to a different location than where you and the host are.

However, here’s the funny part that often makes people very confused about the difference between bring and take. If you’re talking on the phone to the woman who wants appetizer, you’re not going to ask her, “What should I bring for dinner?” You would ask her, “What will I bring?” This is because you are observing the action from her point of view and from her position. You might also ask, “Can I bring a guest? “Is there anything you would like me to bring?” Even if from your point of view, you would be bringing something to dinner, if you stay in conversation with the woman, you are talking about it from her point of view and from her position.

When two or more parties see the action from the same perspective, that a thing is “brought” to their location, whether or not that location is the same, things are “brought,” not taken. Another example of the difference between bring and take may be useful.

Suppose two businessmen are leaving for a meeting where they have to give a lecture. If they are both going to the meeting place, one might say to the other, “Don’t forget to bring your notes.” This is because the two businessmen both go together and the bills will stay with them, essentially in their location at all times. And, of course, when you arrive at the meeting, another anxious colleague might ask, “Did you bring your notes?”

Now let’s say that only one businessman is leaving for his business meeting, while the other is staying somewhere else and not attending the meeting. As the businessman who goes to the meeting leaves, the businessman who stays says, “Don’t forget to take notes.” The notes are “leaving” the businessman who does not attend the meeting and are seen from his point of view. When the two travel together, they do so with notes and view the subject from the final location where the notes are needed.
So the difference between bringing and taking largely depends on the perspective from which you are considering the matter. If you are removing something in another position, from your point of view you are normally “carrying” it, from the initial position to the final one. If you’re asking for something to come to you, or looking from the point of view of the person or place at the destination, you’ll “carry” it. When you ask someone to bring you something, you ask him or her to bring it, but when you ask someone to remove something, you ask him or her to take it. It all depends on how you’re viewing the conversation and who’s perspective you’re viewing it from.

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