The Difference Between HAVE BEEN TO and HAVE BEEN IN?

Today on LetThemTalkTV.

We're going to look at some common mistakes.

Do you know the difference between BEEN TO and BEEN IN?

Let's go.

Look at this sentence and tell me which one is correct.

Have you ever been in Portugal?

Have you ever been to Portugal?

What do you think?

Did you get it?

The answer is No. two.

Have you ever been to Portugal?

Here we are talking about you traveling

from wherever you are to Portugal.

So for movement from one place to another,

we always use TO

the preposition TO is about movement towards.

Here are a couple more examples.

Have you ever been to a baseball game?

Have you ever been to a vegan restaurant?

Now how do we answer these questions?

The question is about an experience.

Have you had that experience or not?

Yes or no?

When you are asking or answering experience questions,

we use the present perfect.

So have you ever been to Portugal?

Not -

Did you go to Portugal?

Yes, I've been there.

Yes, I've been to Portugal.

Have you ever been to a baseball game?

Yes, I've been to one.

If you say WHEN something happens, we use the past simple.

So what fluent English speakers usually do is make one sentence

with the present perfect and one with the past simple.

So have you ever been to Portugal?

Hmm.

Yes, I have.

I have been to Portugal.

I went there last year.

Common mistake.

Do not say yes.

"I have been there last year."

No, you need two sentences here.

You cannot use a present [perfect] tense with a past time phrase.

Have you ever been to a baseball game?

Yes, I have.

I went to one three months ago.

Have you ever been to a vegan restaurant?

What do you think?

Yes, I have been to a vegan restaurant.

Actually, I went to The Happy Carrot

on Saturday night.

OK, I hope that's clear.

But when can we use BEEN IN?

OK for that?

We need to look at the verbs

TO BE and TO GO.

BE we have in the past WAS/WERE and BEEN.

GO

We have in the past WENT and GONE.

But really we also use BEEN.

So WENT GONE/BEEN and BEEN is more accurate as we have

just seen we use BEEN TO for movement and that comes from the verb TO GO

not the verb TO BE use the verb TO BE

for position, for example.

How long have you been in Portugal?

Here we are not talking, not motion towards Portugal.

Instead, we are talking about the duration of time in Portugal.

So its position, so BEEN IN in this sentence is from the verb

TO BE not the verb TO GO.

TO BE

is about position, not movement.

And the answer?

How long have you been in Portugal?

I've been in Portugal for six months.

Yeah, here in Lisbon,

it's position, not movement.

So BEEN IN

OK.

How long have you been in the army?

Well, I've been in the army for ten years.

How long have you been in this bar?

I've been in here for just over an hour.

You can drop the IN here because it's understood from the context.

I've been here for an hour.

And one final thing I said that the verb TO GO is

GO WENT and then GONE or BEEN

But what's the difference between BEEN and GONE?

Let's have a look at this sentence.

Olena has gone to Prague, Olena has been to Prague.

What's the difference between these two sentences?

in order to find out

We need to answer the question Where is Olena now?

Olena has gone to Prague.

Where is she now?

She's in Prague.

GONE TO means that the person is in

a place in the place we're talking about

Olena has been to Prague.

Where's Olenna?

Well, she's not in Prague, either she's returned home

or she's gone somewhere else.

Hope you enjoyed the video.