H

1.23. A) Read the text and tell the difference between ‘house’ and ‘home’.

b) Comment on the following sayings:

“A home without a cat is just a house” (Anon.).

“The difference between a house and a home is this: a house may fall down, but a home is boken up.” (Elbert Hubbard)

ouse vs. Home

A person's home is as much a reflection of his personality as the clothes he wears, the food he eats and the friends with whom he spends his time. Depending on personality, how people see themselves and how they allow others to see them, most have in mind an "ideal home". But in general, and especially for the students or new wage earners, there are practical limitations of cash and location on the way of achieving that idea.

Cash shortage, in fact, often means that the only way of getting along when you leave school is to stay at home for a while until things improve financially. There are obvious advantages to living at home: personal laundry is usually done along with the family wash, meals are provided and you pay minimum rent for it if any at all.

On the other hand, much depends on how a family gets on. Do you parents like your friends? Are you prepared to be tolerant when your parents ask where you are going in the evening and what time you expect to be back?

If you don't like the idea of living with the family, the possibilities are well-known to you already. You can find a good landlady and rent a room till you make enough money to buy a flat or a house of your own.

Most families in Britain live in their own houses, rather than in flats or apartments. The houses are not always very big, and they are often built very close together. The saying ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’ is well-known. It illustrates the desire for privacy and the importance attached to ownership which seems to be at the heart of the British attitude to housing.

But British people have little deep-rooted attachment to their house as an object, or to the land on which it stands. It is the abstract idea of ‘home’ which is important, not the building. This will be sold when the time and price are right and its occupiers will move into some other house which they will turn into ‘home’ – a home which they will love just as much as they did the previous one.

The houses themselves are just investments. An illustration of this lack of attachment to mere houses (as opposed to homes) is that two thirds of all inherited houses are immediately sold by the people who inherit them, even if these people have lived there themselves at some time in their lives. Another is the fact that it is extremely rare for people to commission the building of their own houses. Most houses are commissioned either by local government authorities - for poorer people to live in – or, more frequently, by private companies as ‘property developers’ who sell them on the open market.

There is one exception to the rule that ‘homes’ are more important than ‘houses’. This is among the aristocracy. Many of these families own fine old country houses, often with a great deal of land attached, in which they have lived for hundreds of years. They have a very great emotional investment in their houses – and are prepared to try very hard to stay in them. This can be very difficult in modern times, partly because of death duties (= very high taxes which the inheritor of a large property has to pay).