[Grammar] Go shopping or do shopping ?

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ARUNASALAM88

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Apr 4, 2017
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American English
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Malaysia
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Europe
which one is correct ?
Thank you for your time and effort.
 
Welcome to the forum.:-D

Which one is correct?
Start every new sentence with a capital letter and don't leave a space before a question mark, exclamation mark/point, comma or full stop/period.

They are both correct in the right context.

Please put those phrases into complete sentences for us to consider.

Are you sure you're in Europe and that your native language is AmE?
 
I would go shopping or do the shopping. What's the context- it would depend on whether the shopping were something regular or not, for instance.
 
In AmE you can go shopping but you can't do shopping. Confusingly, you can do some shopping, or a bit of shopping, or (as in Tdol's BrE example) the shopping. There are many other examples of interposed adjectives that make do​ acceptable.
 
I would suggest that do the shopping is mostly used when we are viewing this activity as a task which we have to do.

A very simplistic rule you can remember:


  • do + -ing = tasks that you must achieve
  • go + -ing = actitivities that you enjoy
 
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