# Grammar Q: Is "going to go" redundant? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 29, 2012, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464 "2012-11-29T14:29:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/1 "2012-11-29T14:29:25Z")
Most of us know that the future simple tense can be expressed informally by using “going to” in place of will or shall. Regard: I will/shall go eat now. I am going to eat now. In fact, this usage probably dominates in casual conversation. Then I started thinking about what should happen to this construction when the thing that I am going to do is GO. I am going to **go to** work tomorrow. I am going to **go** eat now. Both sentences work just fine without “go”. The word certainly seems redundant or at least superfluous. Are there any situations where the “go” is needed after “going to”? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/2 "2012-11-29T14:33:04Z")
No, it’s fine. You can even say “gonna go” in colloquial speech. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/3 "2012-11-29T14:41:17Z")
Agreed. “I’m going to travel back home this afternoon” is less repetitive than “I’m going to go back home this afternoon”, but both are equally correct. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/4 "2012-11-29T15:01:30Z")
> [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](#): > > I am going to **go to** work tomorrow. If you remove “tomorrow” from this sentence, then the “to go” is not redundant: “I am going to work” means “I am doing it right now”, while “I am going to go to work” means “I will do it in the future”. It’s just a quirk that a progressive present with a word that explicitly specifies when the action is happening “counts” as a future tense. ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/5 "2012-11-29T15:08:52Z")
It’s grammatically correct, but just clumsy word usage in my view. Unfortunately there’s really not a better way to say it aloud that doesn’t sound stilted, though it’s less awkward in written speech: “I’m preparing to go to work now.” or “I plan to leave for work in a few minutes.” Aside: I grew up in a rural southern town, and sometimes the grammar was atrocious. Particularly grating to my ears was the use of the word “done” — “I done forgot my book,” or “I done made the cake,” for example. This led to the often-repeated shortened phrase of “I done done it.” Arggh! ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/6 "2012-11-29T15:15:21Z")
> [@Ellen\_Cherry](#): > > It’s grammatically correct, but just clumsy word usage in my view. Unfortunately there’s really not a better way to say it aloud that doesn’t sound stilted, though it’s less awkward in written speech: “I’m preparing to go to work now.” or “I plan to leave for work in a few minutes.” > > Aside: I grew up in a rural southern town, and sometimes the grammar was atrocious. Particularly grating to my ears was the use of the word “done” — “I done forgot my book,” or “I done made the cake,” for example. This led to the often-repeated shortened phrase of “I done done it.” Arggh! I have family raised in West Virginia, and I hear “done did it” a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/7 "2012-11-29T17:50:27Z")
> [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](#): > > I am going to **go to** work tomorrow. > I am going to **go** eat now. > > Both sentences work just fine without “go”. The word certainly seems redundant or at least superfluous. Are there any situations where the “go” is needed after “going to”? To me, the word is not redundant. “I am going to go to work tomorrow” means “I will travel to my office and perform my work tomorrow”. “I am going to work tomorrow” is ambiguous : Meaning 1: “I will be going to work tomorrow”, same as above. Meaning 2: “I am gonna work tomorrow” , which means “I will perform my work tomorrow” without the notion of travel. Could be a home office. Same thing with the “go eat” sentence. The full sentence indicates that I need to travel (to a room or across town) before I eat. Without the “go”, I could be sitting in the kitchen with a sandwich in front of me. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/8 "2012-11-29T17:52:56Z")
> [@Ellen\_Cherry](#): > > Aside: I grew up in a rural southern town, and sometimes the grammar was atrocious. Particularly grating to my ears was the use of the word “done” — “I done forgot my book,” or “I done made the cake,” for example. This led to the often-repeated shortened phrase of “I done done it.” Arggh! At one time I _had_ had that reaction, but then I got over it even if you _do_ do it. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/9 "2012-11-29T17:59:26Z")
> [@Heracles](#): > > To me, the word is not redundant. > > “I am going to go to work tomorrow” means “I will travel to my office and perform my work tomorrow”. > > “I am going to work tomorrow” is ambiguous : > Meaning 1: “I will be going to work tomorrow”, same as above. > Meaning 2: “I am gonna work tomorrow” , which means “I will perform my work tomorrow” without the notion of travel. Could be a home office. > Same thing with the “go eat” sentence. The full sentence indicates that I need to travel (to a room or across town) before I eat. Without the “go”, I could be sitting in the kitchen with a sandwich in front of me. Same here. And the sentences don’t sound clumsy at all to me. (“Gonna go” and “going to go” is used quite freely in my dialect, so it sounds perfectly naturaly.) The alternatives, on the other hand, are a bit stilted. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/10 "2012-11-29T18:16:03Z")
And then there’s “I’m gonna go ahead and eat” meaning I am prepared to eat and waiting for some reason, and ca’t wait any longer! ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/11 "2012-11-29T18:43:25Z")
I’m going to go ahead and get going now. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/12 "2012-11-29T19:06:38Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > If you remove “tomorrow” from this sentence, then the “to go” is not redundant: “I am going to work” means “I am doing it right now”, while “I am going to go to work” means “I will do it in the future”. Bada bing. I suppose you can say “I’m going to go to work” to mean you’re going to do it right now, but I wouldn’t. Seems silly and redundant, but yes, if we’re discussing future, I’d totally say “I’m going to go to work tomorrow,” though “I’m going to work tomorrow” works just as well. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/13 "2012-11-29T19:19:59Z")
> [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](#): > > I am going to **go to** work tomorrow. > I am going to **go** eat now. > > Both sentences work just fine without “go”. The word certainly seems redundant or at least superfluous. Are there any situations where the “go” is needed after “going to”? “I am going to eat now” = I intend to consume this food that I have with me now. “I am going to go eat now” = I intend to transport myself now to another venue where I can consume food. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/14 "2012-11-29T19:23:44Z")
Go/going is properly used as an auxiliary verb as well as a main verb, so I think it’s fine to use both together. As **Johanna** pointed out, when used as the auxiliary verb “going to” is elided into “gonna”, but never when used as the main verb. “I’m gonna the store,” would be unintelligible to a native speaker, who could nevertheless easily understand, “I’m gonna go to the store now.” Until I taught English to foreign speakers, I never even realized an elision was happening. My students were baffled by “I’m gonna” phrases, and it took me awhile to realize that I taught it as “going to” and was expecting them to understand it as “gonna”. English is called a “time stress” language, which means we destress (mumble), speed up, and even change the pronunciations of words that aren’t of prime importance to the meaning of the whole sentence. I sure there are other languages that do this, but I actually don’t know of any. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/15 "2012-11-29T19:48:01Z")
> [@Greg\_Charles](#): > > As **Johanna** pointed out, when used as the auxiliary verb “going to” is elided into “gonna”, but never when used as the main verb. “I’m gonna the store,” would be unintelligible to a native speaker, who could nevertheless easily understand, “I’m gonna go to the store now.” The one counterexample I can think of would be John Lennon’s song “Meat City” from the album _Mind Games_. Song has the line: _Well I’m gonna China to see for myself, just gotta get me some rock ‘n’ roll_ and later repeats _Well I’m gonna China, gonna China, gonna China_… Thing is, though, Lennon actually pronounces the verb as [ˈgoʊənə]. Which, although it’s a bit slurred, I think is intelligible to most English speakers as a contraction of “going to” meaning traveling to a place. The transcription “gonna” would normally be read as [ˈgʌnə] (stressed) or [gənə] (unstressed). Whoever chose to spell Lennon’s colloquial pronunciation verb that way, whether Lennon himself or some record company flunky assigned to transcribe lyrics off of the recording, didn’t make a very good choice of spelling, if you ask me. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/16 "2012-11-29T19:48:35Z")
You can use going to go for predictions where you’re pretty certain about what will happen, based on evidence in front of you. “He’s going to go past him.” (In a race). He’s going past him would have a completely different meaning in that context. Similarly, “I’m going to the pub tomorrow” sounds a little more definite than “I’m going to go to the pub tomorrow.” In some contexts that’s more obvious than others - “some day, we’re going to go to hawaii” sounds more tentative than “some day, we’re going to hawaii.” It’s the form usually used for talking about dreams and aspirations. In other contexts, people sometimes use “going to go” because there’s kinda a cultural bias against sounding too definite, and, like I said, “going to go” is more tentative. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Doom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/0ea827/32.png) [@Dr\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Doom)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2012, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/17 "2012-11-29T20:06:29Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > …colloquial speech. I was going to remark on this, now I’m going to forget about it. Just sayin’. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2012, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/18 "2012-11-30T01:06:28Z")
I love the “done done” phrase, for no particularly good reason. I first picked it up from Li’l Abner. I used to work as a sysadmin in a university-like environment, where one might suppose people knew decent grammar. I was expected to write a brief memo each week describing what tasks I had accomplished. I always titled it “What I Done Done This Week”, to the amusement of all. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2012, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/19 "2012-11-30T08:35:47Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > “I am going to work” means “I am doing it right now” I take issue with this. I can’t imagine any situation or context where “I am going to [verb]” implies the present continuous tense. Even if I “am going to eat” as soon as I submit this post, and my food is sitting right here in front of me, it is still a future action. Granted it’s the immediate future that is just moments away, but that is still the future tense. Nor can I find any textbook that supports that usage, and I have several dozen scattered around me right now. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2012, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464/20 "2012-11-30T08:44:32Z")
> [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](#): > > I take issue with this. I can’t imagine any situation or context where “I am going to [verb]” implies the present continuous tense. > > Even if I “am going to eat” as soon as I submit this post, and my food is sitting right here in front of me, it is still a future action. Granted it’s the immediate future that is just moments away, but that is still the future tense. > > Nor can I find any textbook that supports that usage, and I have several dozen scattered around me right now. On the train: “where are you going?” “I’m going to work.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-q-is-going-to-go-redundant/642464.md?page=2)