Hi,
If I got a sentence like ‘The kids jumped and ran around/about the house’, how could I determine whether inside or outside the house?
Thank you.
haihao
Hi Haihao,
‘Around the house’ and ‘about the house’ would suggest to me first that this is inside the house indicating in and out of the rooms. If you wanted to give the idea of ‘outside the house’ you would have to make this clear with a description like: The children ran right round the house/all the way round the house.
A
In American English you wouldn’t be able to tell whether the kids were inside or outside, and you’d have to specify that in some way. We don’t use “round” the house that much, and for us it is usually synonymous with “around”, so it wouldn’t clarify much for us if you changed the wording that way. We would probably assume “about” the house meant inside, but we still wouldn’t be completely sure.