Why not "go to home"?

[jamiep]

A common error the (Thai) students in my school make is "I go to home". There was a discussion in our teachers room today about explaining this but none of us could come up with a reason why this is incorrect.

You can go to school, go to church etc but you can't go to home. We know it's wrong but can't come up with reason beyond "it just is"

Any ideas?

[BobK]

Maybe the word "homeward[s]" comes into it.... [Still thinking (is there an icon for that?)...]

b

[wace]

My guess is that 'home' in the phrase 'go home' takes on an adverbial value, rather like saying 'to go south'. You couldn't possibly say 'to go to south', could you?

[Raymott]

We know it's wrong but can't come up with reason beyond "it just is"

That's an entirely respectable explanation, and it also happens to be right.
That's just how we say it.

[wace]

Whose explanation is 'entirely respectable'?

[engee30]

Whose explanation is 'entirely respectable'?

Jamiep's.
Look at the post above yours - there's a box of blue colour containing the previous poster's comments to which Raymott was referring in his post.

Look at this post and what can you see now? Again, there's a blue box, but this time with your comments from your previous post, and I am referring to your post in my post now.

[wace]

Thanks
that was an 'entirely respectable' (and detailed) reply!

[engee30]

Thanks
that was an 'entirely respectable' (and detailed) reply!

Couldn't agree more.

[jamiep]

Thanks for the replies.

Given that some of the students struggle to understand the difference between a noun and a verb when asked, even if they can otherwise communicate fairly well, I'll stick with "just is" for now.

[ladybird987]

Well, maybe it would be advisable to present them parts of the speech. This could help them a lot. Why don't you compair English with Thai? If they are not advanced enough to learn it in English, it would be easy in Thai.