Nine-year-old Lydia in Madison, Alabama, wonders about the difference between the words immigrate and emigrate. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Immigrate vs. Emigrate”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Lydia. I’m calling from Madison, Alabama.
Hi, Lydia. Welcome to the show.
Hello, Lydia.
What can we do for you?
Well, I have this question about two words.
They sounded really similar, but they’re spelled a little differently.
It’s immigrate with an E and one M, and immigrate with an I and two M.
I could see how these could be confusing.
Did you look them up or you just thought of us and thought you’d go straight to the experts?
Yeah, I thought of you guys.
Oh, we’re so glad you did.
Yeah, me too.
And the difference between these two words, Lydia, has to do with your point of view.
They’re two different words.
And basically, you emigrate when you leave a place.
That’s with the E at the beginning.
Emigrate has to do with leaving.
And immigrate has to do with entering a place.
So you’re traveling in each case, but in one case you’re going out of a place,
And with the other word you’re coming in to a place.
And the way to remember that is the I at the beginning of immigrant has to do with somebody going in,
And the E in emigrate has to do with exiting or leaving.
Yeah.
And there’s something kind of permanent about this.
It’s not just I’m immigrating from the house today to go to work, right?
You immigrate from a country when you are going to make a permanent move,
Or you immigrate to a country when you’re going to make a permanent move.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think so, too.
And another difference between the two is that immigrate going in has two Ms,
And emigrate just has one when you’re going out.
So when you get to the place, you get a new M.
Okay.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Okay, good.
If you need further clarification, pop us an email, and we’ll send you a little note on it, all right?
Okay.
Do you listen to our show a lot?
Yeah.
Great.
Well, you’ve helped a lot of other people understand these words, too, Lydia, so we’re really glad you called.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, bye, Lydia.
Take care.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
You know, sometimes kids ask the best questions.
Right.
And we’d love to hear from more of you, so give us a call, 877-929-9673,
Or send us your questions in email.
That address is words@waywordradio.org.
