Sentence nº250930
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A normal phrase when I describe my job (I just translated about a hundred...) is to write "My job is to...." not "my job is ...ing"
I would admit it if it were true, but the expression to me is very natural and extremely common. I don't find it ambiguous. "My job is ...ing" can be used for official/unofficial, but for something like this, it's pretty clear that it's unofficial. I know that if I actually had a job that I was paid for that involved taking care of a baby, I'd probably say "I'm paid to..." to make it clear that it was a real job (otherwise, it's assumed as a household responsibility or something of the like).
You don't like Google, so I'll search after posting this comment, but I'm sure that there'd be a good number of results for this, with this meaning.
Anyway, IMO, this is completely natural and something you'd hear very often (whether with babies or whatever else). Others should voice their opinions, though.
What about: "My job is pissing you off"?
"job is taking care of the baby" might yield results that mean that my employer's organisation is taking care of the baby when I need it...
No, I just mean that it's very clear from the context which meaning it is. There's a fine line between "grammatically ambiguous" and "(real) ambiguous".
I could argue that "give me a ring" is ambiguous too (donnez-moi un anneau, as I translated earlier for fun), and grammatically it is, but not practically. Same goes for this. It's very clear that it's more of a chore than a paid job, and thus not (practically) ambiguous.
Regarding "to take" vs. "taking", it doesn't seem to matter to me. Both have the same meaning (to my ears, at least).
I explain again:
Many companies, especially in China and Japan (and also Scandinavia), have nursery services for their employees while the latter are at work.
Thus, an employee of such company might perfectly be entitled to state: "My job (ie my employer) is taking care of the baby (my baby, while I am at work)".
Get it ?
However, I don't think it's standard to use "job" in that context. I think it'd be more natural to say "my employer" or "my company", or - to be completely clear (my company's nursery service).
- Who's looking after your kid?
- My job.
- Huh?
It doesn't really work... You can keep arguing, of course, but I return to my last comment. This phrase is grammatically ambiguous, but not practically so.
By that same argument, as soon as a certain use pops up on Google, a new meaning is formed, and the original becomes ambiguous. You could go on forever. I could find you an excuse to label almost any sentence as "ambiguous".
Maybe in some small town, "baby" is what men call their cars. If one of them goes on here and says "This is ambiguous. As all 500 of us use this term, we feel that the sentence is poorly constructed", do we label it "ambiguous"?
Long story short, I think you should remove the tag.
I would never say "My job is taking of the baby" if I were say speaking to a friend who asked who was watching my newborn child or something.
I would say something like, "My company provides a daycare service or something".
Otherwise if I were a babysitter/nanny/au pair by profession I would say "My job is to take care of babies/children" most commonly.
I can only imagine a situation in which someone like a police officer or someone who doesn't know what is going on coming into a house and asking what I'm doing there or what my purpose is (which I can't ever imagine happening) in which I'd say "My job is taking care of the baby" lol.
Thank you for removing the tag. On a completely different note, people generally seem to resort to bringing personal details into an argument when they don't have anything logical to say. If you question dalanmiller's personal experience, people can also question yours. I know you have it, but the last thing we want (and here you would agree) is a paranoid society.
On a side note, this sentence had to go through a lot for an orphan. I think I'm going to give it a home.
I also doubt, see from his foirst remark, that he does understand the issue, the same way you missed the point the first time.
I ca
I maintain this phrase is ambiguous, and I still want to have the opinion of a native with a real experience of working places and of the vocabulary that applies to nursing services provided by them.
I insist anyway that this phrase is at least "unnatural" since the correct form should be "My job is TO TAKE care of the baby" it it is the translation from the Chinese, as sysko asserted.
I said this already. Your viewpoint is fine. The phrase can be read that way, but don't be so tied up to it so as not to recognize that most people wouldn't see it this way. Add your translation, label it "rare", and call it a day. The current phrase is a perfectly fine translation of the Chinese, and it is perfectly natural.
Regarding the other thing, questioning a person's experience on a site isn't valid, IMO. You have nothing to prove that he's really 23, that I'm really 25, and that you really wear glasses on a string. If you bring personal details into this, you open up a whole new can of worms, since anyone can say anything without real repercussions on these forums. There's also no reason why a 23-year-old wouldn't have a lot of experience in any random field.
Anyway, this is my last post. I find it entertaining to debate with you these days, but too much of it is... too much.
I request moderation and expertise.
And yes, I am perfectly entitled to debate would-be professional expertise by 23-years-olds, because I am 48 and I see problems that they don't, thanks to experience, as I just demonstrated.
So trust me when I say, no one I know would ever say this sentence with the intention that their company takes care of their child.
That doesn't mean it doesn't make sense, it definitely does with the meaning you are suggesting. Yet only in a very specific specific situation I could see it even being plausible. Most native speakers would describe the situation in another way, and would never say "my job" or "the baby" when referring to their own child.
So by all means call it ambiguous you're entitled to your debate, but from a native speaking standpoint which undoubtedly gives me a significant amount of perspective, perhaps equal to your 25 years of acquired "professionalism", that this ambiguity would never exist in communicated English in 99.999% of situations.
Your comment here is also incorrect:
@FeuDRenais: admit that the fact that the form is "taking" makes it ambiguous...
A normal phrase when I describe my job (I just translated about a hundred...) is to write "My job is to...." not "my job is ...ing"
It is totally acceptable to be describing your job and say "My job is putting up shelving" as well as "My job is to put up shelving". The former is just a little more casual and less proper but they are pretty much equivalent.