(Excuse for my broken English) I am a Japanese student studying English.
The other day, my classmate was asked to translate the below Japanese sentence into English by the teacher:
- この手紙がロンドンに着くまで、どのくらい時間がかかりますか？
The teacher showed the answer like this:
- How long does it take a letter to reach London?
But my classmate had translated it into this:
- How long does this letter take to arrive at London?
Is this sentence #3 unnatural?
No one who was in the class can answer whether this sentence is natural or unnatural. If this sentence is unnatural, what is it that makes it unnatural?
Best Answer
"A letter" means letters in general. It means, "If someone (not necessarily me) sends a letter to London, how long will it take to get there?"
"This letter" means a specific letter (like Japanese これ[kore], I think). "The letter that I am talking about (or pointing at or holding in my hand right now) - how long will this specific letter take to get to London?"
When we're talking about a specific letter, the verb "to do" needs to be in the future tense ('will'), because the letter hasn't yet arrived in London.
And as quant points out, you need to use 'in London' rather than 'at London'. Because London is a big place and the letter will be within it.
So it should be:
if I want to know the travel time for this specific letter that I am holding in my hand right now, or
if I want to know the travel time for letters in general, not any particular letter, just a hypothetical letter that anyone might send.
is also fine: 'to arrive in' and 'to reach' mean the same thing in this context.