Matters to tend to or Matters to attend to?

January 3, 2007 8:43 AM

EnglishAsASecondLanguageFilter: Does one have matters to attend to or matters to tend to? Justify your answer for extra credit.
posted by falameufilho to Education (22 answers total)

Attend. It sounds more natural to me; while "tend to" is certainly perfectly meaningful there, I suspect "attend to" is the much more common form of the fixed-phrase idiom.

Google seems to agree:
~64,000 hits for matters to attend to, and
~360 for matters to tend to.
posted by cortex at 8:48 AM on January 3, 2007

Best answer: Attend.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:51 AM on January 3, 2007

matters to attend to is the normal way of putting it.

I don't know whether there's anything wrong with "matters to tend to" per se, but it's not commonly used.
posted by matthewr at 8:51 AM on January 3, 2007

Attend. Definition 9, Random House:
to apply oneself: to attend to one's work.
posted by phoenixy at 8:51 AM on January 3, 2007

"Attend to" is roughly synonymous with "pay attention to/deal with" in this context; whereas "tend to" implies some kind of caretaking and is just wrong. You don't want to feed and water your "to do" list, you want to get it done.

dictionary.com is your friend here:
attend
v.intr.
...
2. To take care; give attention: We'll attend to that problem later.
3. To apply or direct oneself: attended to their business.
4. To pay attention: attended disinterestedly to the debate.
...

on preview, what everyone else said :)
posted by obliquicity at 8:55 AM on January 3, 2007

whereas "tend to" implies some kind of caretaking and is just wrong.

I disagree, but “matters to attend to” is the more idiomatic version.
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 8:57 AM on January 3, 2007

The "phrase" is, as stated by others, Matters to attend to. Funny thing with that extra "to" on the end, it becomes, more or less, grammatically incorrect. Which is to say that a grammarian would mark it in red.

The grammatically correct phrase would be "I have matters to which I must attend". But, we USians no longer care about such things and dangling prepositions, and I'm pretty sure grammar has been replaced with ebonics appreciation in most schools.
posted by jaded at 8:58 AM on January 3, 2007

"have matters to attend to" has a more pleasing sonic structure, with assonance as well as consonance (A's and T's) as well as fitting into a pleasing iambic cadence ( - ^ - ^ - ^ - ).

"tend to" has no assonance and uneven metrics ( - ^ - - ^ - ).

I think the meaning of both phrases is identical in practice.
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:03 AM on January 3, 2007

jaded: what makes you think that "I have matters to which I must attend" is any more correct than "I have matters to attend to"? Is it because it sounds vaguely old fashioned?

And what precisely is wrong with the final "to"? It performs the same function as the "to" in "I have matters to which I must attend".
posted by claudius at 9:29 AM on January 3, 2007

I think either is correct, because Dictionary.com's entry for tend includes an intransitive form meaning "To apply one's attention; attend."
posted by LouMac at 9:45 AM on January 3, 2007

And what precisely is wrong with the final "to"?

A preposition is a poor word to end a sentence with.^1,2
posted by spacewrench at 9:46 AM on January 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

Funny thing with that extra "to" on the end, it becomes, more or less, grammatically incorrect. Which is to say that a grammarian would mark it in red.

This is wrong. There is nothing wrong with ending sentences with prepositions. It is a stupid invented superstition.
posted by languagehat at 9:55 AM on January 3, 2007

Response by poster: I had to mark the link to "Roy Orbison Cling-film Slash Fiction" as the best answer, sorry. That is definetely a classic. Thanks for reminding me.

As for the rest of you, thank you very much for increasing my knowledge of the english language!
posted by falameufilho at 9:58 AM on January 3, 2007

I have heard both, and I'm going to offer that if I were asked this in class, I would get slightly different sahdings of meaning from each, despite the fact that they have basically identical meanings:

matters to attend to : possibly new matters
matters to attend to : ongoing matters

I would further say that that'd be my impression, and that such nuance may not be something that most people note or agree with.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:45 PM on January 3, 2007

Whoops. The second one should be 'matters to tend to'.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:45 PM on January 3, 2007

I have to say that when I read "I would get slightly different sahdings of meaning from each" I assumed sahding was some Korean term with a meaning so subtle it couldn't be conveniently expressed in English. Then I realized it was just a typo for "shading," and my world got a little less interesting.
posted by languagehat at 5:15 PM on January 3, 2007

I had the same reaction. That's the way the sahding crublems, man.
posted by cortex at 5:23 PM on January 3, 2007

My gut is ruling my brain today, which happens fairly often, and when that happens, my brain don't work so good. Sorry.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:28 PM on January 3, 2007

Don't apologize—anyone can make a typo, brain or no brian, and sahding was a sodding good one!
posted by languagehat at 6:01 PM on January 3, 2007

Re: ending a sentence with a preposition

It's very hard to end a sentence with a preposition that is actually functioning as a preposition. Usually such a word is part of a phrasal verb.
posted by RussHy at 9:36 PM on January 3, 2007

Slightly off-topic. I'm currently learning a second language and thinking about doing a Tesol course and I find this kind of discussion fascinating. Does anyone know of a web-site or forum that discusses these sort of semantic issues at this kind of level?
posted by holojames at 9:51 AM on January 4, 2007

holojames:
Start from languagehat.com and Language Log, and go from their blog links.
posted by RussHy at 2:50 PM on January 6, 2007