nhungphung
be it so humble. there's no place like home.. i have trouble in this sentence. i want to understand the grammar structure in it. please help me out. thank you in advance
Aug 20, 2015 2:13 PM
Answers · 5
1
The full line is "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home" which I think comes from a poem that was made into a song. "Be it ever" actually means "Although" or "Even though" and is intended to show contrast.
August 20, 2015
Cultural notes: The full poem follows. It has given us another phrase, "Home, sweet home." In the United States someone returning from vacation might well say "That was great, but it's good to be back at home, sweet home." And someone else might reply, "Yes, there's really no place like home, is there?" In the 1939 "The Wizard of Oz," which is close to a cultural universal in the United States, Dorothy, stranded in the magical Land of Oz and desperate to return home, achieve her goals by clicking her ruby slippers together and repeating, over and over, "There's no place like home... there's no place like home... there's no place like home." Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which seek thro' the world, is ne'er met elsewhere. Home! Home! Home, sweet home! There's no place like home There's no place like home!
August 20, 2015
It's a famous line from the poem and song "Home! Sweet Home!" written in the early 1800s, and the language is slightly old fashioned and poetic. Native English speakers recognize it as a quotation, or at least a saying. "There's no place like home" means "no place can compare to home." It's understood which direction the comparison goes--home is better. In fact, it's incomparably better. The line that precedes it is "Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam..." In later life we may live in "palaces" but the place you think of as "home" is always better. "Be" is the subjunctive! It's the present subjunctive of the verb "to be." I use the exclamation point because there are very few examples of the subjunctive in English, but you've found one of them. It has almost disappeared from modern English. It was a little more common in the 1800s. The subjunctive is used to express a hypothetical situation. Maybe your home _is_ "humble" (small, plain, inexpensive), maybe it isn't. The author doesn't know. It doesn't matter. If your home is big and luxurious it is home to you and better than "palaces." If your home is small and humble it is home to you and better than palaces. "Ever so" means the unlimited degree. No matter _how_ humble it is--even if it were a shack--it is home to you and better than palaces. To summarize: "Be it so humble. there's no place like home" means "I don't know what your home was like, but no matter how humble it was, to you there is no other place as good as home."
August 20, 2015
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