69 Comments
It means the heating's not working in a stable way, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't, randomly.
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I see you're learning spanish too. I'm native spanish, and I can tell you that you'll find this same phrase in Spanish too... it means "va y viene", I mean, it's works randomly: sometimes it works fine, sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes it works poorly... it isn't stable :)
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It's extra confusing because in English we would be more likely to say that it comes and goes, as opposed to goes and comes.
To understand that, I take into account what is the point of reference. "Comes and goes" if it comes is because it was gone. If a dive is supposed to be on constantly then you would notice the problem because it "goes and comes".
The opposite is applicable: if the device is supposed to be off most of the time and you just turn it on to used at specific moment then you would notice that it does not work at all or that it "comes and goes".
The heating in my appartment have dual aspects. Let's say I have the heating on the whole day during winter and then the Super of the building starts turning service on and off during the day. From this point of view I would day that heating "goes and comes". That is because it was supposed to be on in the first place then I noticed the problem when it stared "going and coming".
Now let's say it's the end of the summer / beginning of the winter. The heating (the service provided by the landlord) is suppoed to be off. But during the week the Super of the building has been turning on and off the heating. Then I would say "the heating has been coming and going the whole week".
Same thing when one says "back and forth", "in and out", etc.
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It doesn't have anything to do with any specific order or whether something is usually on or off. "Come and go" is an English idiom. That’s just how we say it. :)
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They're fixed phrases. I agree the Romance language versions make more sense than English in this case, but you can't use that as a reason to swap the order in English because it will still sound strange.
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Swapping the normal order like this keeps one on one's toes though; true?
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Quite right. The translation here could make learners think that va = comes & viene = goes when it's the other way around. Va is from the verb andare (to go) & viene from venire (to come). Irregular verbs are tricky enough without confusing beginner students!!
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I had an apartment like that once. Sometimes the heat was working, sometimes not.
This is what observe and understand. Similar to Spanish
Irse e Venire -Go (away) and come (back)- refers to the suspension and reactivation of certain services like electricity (often called "corrente" or "luce") and water. You might hear "la corrente si va ogni giorno alle otto e viene alle undici" Everyday the light goes (away) at 8:00 and comes (back) or returns at 11:00. This is, everyday the electric service is suspended at 8:00 and reactivated at 11:00. "La luce va e viene ogni giorno a la stessa ora, da cinco a sette dalla mattina".
Ire e venire (go and come) refers to the functioning of something. "Il ricalentamento va e viene" (the heating -referring to the heating system- goes and comes). That is, it stops working and then starts working again.
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Your phrase does mean the same as the given answer, but I'm not sure that it's an accurate translation.
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That describes properly working heating though. Comes and goes suggests something different: that it is irratic.
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I think in French we say "va et vient" ; just like in Italian and in Spanish. But unlike English, which prefers "comes and goes". It sounds better !
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So somebody should call the most famous Italian plumbers that we all know very well ;-)
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why not ´goes on and off´? Isn´t ithat a more appropriate way when you refer to machines?
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'Goes on and off' in English means it is able to turn on and off. 'Comes and goes' in English means it randomly turns on and off, implying a malfunctioning machine
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Yes but the heating can mean the procedure of heating as well. And hence the heating can go and come again.
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Considering the lengthy discussion this has caused, perhaps this sentence should be moved to the idioms lesson. Can we all just agree that idioms are the way they are through tradition and traditions are regional and cultural. Romance languages do it one way, English the other. (I don't know if it extends to other Germanic languages. Any German speakers?) It's not unusual for English to be opposite of everyone else. Look at how the English insisted on driving on the left side of the road for no other reason than the French use the right. LOL Although, it also has something to do with one's sword arm.
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No. Just being framed a little differently or having a different grammatical construction is not enough to make it an idiom.
The idioms section is about the kind of idiom that is completely opaque and cannot be understood at all on the surface.
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Judging by the number of posts saying it didn't make sense and it should be "on and off" suggests many highly intelligent people would differ. When this many people are confused, I usually stop blaming the people. The heating, whether it's "comes and goes" or "goes and comes", suggests on face value that your heater it getting up and leaving the house, only to return when it's finished its errands. I see your point that there are many idioms that are much more baffling. But, I guess it's a matter of degrees. How "opaque" does it have to be to qualify? Is "translucent" good enough? ;-)
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- 1856
The complaints come from a solidly English-language sense that the words "on" and "off" need to come in a certain sequence. I don't think I've seen anyone say they don't understand what it means, just that they don't understand why it's said slightly differently.
An idiom would be more along the lines of "Non vedo l'ora". Literally, it says "I cannot see the hour". Can you guess from this that it's used to mean "I can't wait"?
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"Va e viene" which is "comes and goes". Is there a grammatical reason for the word order?
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- 1856
No, just long tradition. It sounds weird to say "goes and comes". It's what's called a set phrase.
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Hi guys can you help about this words am always mistake with it. I have road( the heating goes and come ) I have got it wrong now I don't know which is which.
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- 1856
Literally word-for-word, the Italian says "The heating goes and comes." But in English, we say "The heating comes and goes". Translation is not about one-to-one word replacement. It needs to fit the target language.
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last time it was ticked as correct and the dictionary says central heating!
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- 1856
Yes, but in this case we want to translate it according to how we actually say it. In English, we say it comes and goes.
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- 1856
Because that's a very specific sub-type that's not implied in the original.
I put 'the heating goes on and off'. Seems good to me. 'comes and goes' ?? who uses this in english.
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- 1856
Plenty of people say "comes and goes". Like me.
And "goes on and off" does not mean the same thing as "comes and goes". The former refers to it cycling on and off normally. The latter refers to when something goes wrong and sometimes it functions as it should and sometimes it doesn't.
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I think this sentence refers to the discomforts women of a certain age suffer from.
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i wrote - The heating goes on and off- the answer is marked as wrong?
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- 1856
As explained elsewhere, "goes on and off" is how it's supposed to work.
"Comes and goes" means sometimes it functions the way it should and sometimes it doesn't.
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In English we can use "heat" to represent the heating system, but it's not a good idea to assume it works the same way in Italian.
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in English we normally would say comes and goes rather than goes and comes. Would that be marked wrong?
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"Comes and goes" is the appropriate translation and should be marked right.
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Idioms are different given the language. In Spanish and Italian the saying "Black and white" in literal translation is "white and black." Part of learning a language is knowing how to indirectly translate the idioms.
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"Comes and goes" is definitely the preferred form in English. I would expect from this example that the Italian equivalent of "goes and comes" is more natural in Italian.
These things develop in part because of how it sounds to say two or three words in a phrase. This has to do with cadence (the rhythm of the phrase) as well as sounds that get stuck together in a certain order, and which word sounds best as the final word in the phrase. (The other day I was trying to put together three words in a set ("a, b, and c") and considering which order they should go in, and it did seem that the sound of the final one mattered a lot more than the other two.) And since you can't expect both words to sound the same in Italian as in English, you can't expect the phrasing to be identical.
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For Italian and Spanish speakers " va e viene" " va y viene" it is the way we speak.
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how about telling intermittent? cause va and viene are for walking by steps
In my opinion it shoul read 'it goes off and on' because it would rightly signify the heater's epileptic function.
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the heating is on and off should be accepted,we cannot translate literally every sentence from italian to english
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Heating is meant to go on and off. Comes and goes suggests it's not working properly.
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I initially thought the same but looking at the comments, my view has changed.
