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I want to know the meaning of these two sentences and the differences "Have you ever gone to Europe?" "Have you ever been to Europe?" (As one of the fellows said, it is not like the mentioned duplicate because it has the ever word)

Hamish
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    Generally, if we say somebody has gone to Europe, he hasn't come back yet, and if he's been to Europe, he's come back. – Peter Shor Jan 14 '19 at 16:05
  • But this doesn't apply to constructions like gone to jail, gone to (the) hospital, and so forth. – Peter Shor Jan 14 '19 at 16:11
  • Peter is wrong in this case, but I can't submit my answer any longer to explain why in full. Summarily, he's overapplying a rule that would be the case in most situations. You adding the adverb "ever" means that "gone to" can refer to any past instance of travel, rather than a current state of travel. So both questions are functionally similar: they ask if someone has traveled to Europe at any point in the past. I think the question isn't quite a duplicate because of the adverb "ever." – TaliesinMerlin Jan 14 '19 at 16:29
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    @TaliesinMerlin But a native speaker would simply never ask it in that sense. It is not idiomatic. Rather, it's symptomatic of someone new to Engish who doesn't know enough verbs yet, or is calquing some foreign usage that doesn't work in English, or is simply too unfamiliar with the common patterns of normal English. It sounds wrong. – tchrist Jan 14 '19 at 16:33
  • I did a Corpus of Contemporary American English search and the exact string "have you ever gone to" showed up over 10 times. I've also heard it this way and have perhaps said it myself. So it's idiomatic. (See also search results beyond the pale of people asking whether it's correct: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/learning/have-you-ever-gone-to-a-place-for-the-primary-purpose-of-taking-selfies.html ) – TaliesinMerlin Jan 14 '19 at 16:36
  • @TaliesinMerlin The example in the question, and even more unambiguously the one you linked to, uses go in a different sense from be. It stresses the actual journey rather than the resulting sojourn. “Have you ever gone to Europe?” as a standalone question is unusual in that we don’t normally ask about journeys, but about destinations (unless a special context dictates otherwise). Similarly, “Have you ever been on the way to Europe?” is unusual except in very specific contexts. “Have you ever been to Europe?” is much more commonly applicable. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 14 '19 at 18:22
  • @Janus Bahs Jacquet No. That's not how "ever gone to" would be understood; yes, the journey is emphasized, but the resulting expression asks something logically similar to "ever been to" - have they traveled there before? No strict split between expressions. I'm starting to think there's an intriguing question about dialect difference here, since British speakers tend to object to "have [ever] gone to," whereas American speakers are more often okay with it. (E.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/grammar/comments/2c7vvg/have_you_ever_gone_to_china/ , where American speakers are usually fine with it.) – TaliesinMerlin Jan 14 '19 at 18:50
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    @TaliesinMerlin There may be a dialectal split, but tchrist is American (and I’m an odd mixture of both). I disagree with him that it’s unidiomatic as such, but I maintain that it is unusual and much less common than be in the form given here. The two exist on a spectrum, and where the NY Times header you linked is way out on the go end (“Have you ever been to a place for the primary purpose of taking a selfie?” is very odd-sounding to me), the example in the question is out on the be side of it to me, where go starts becoming awkward. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 14 '19 at 18:57
  • Cool. You're right about commonality. My main point is that either one could be used or understood by a native speaker. – TaliesinMerlin Jan 14 '19 at 19:03
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    @TaliesinMerlin: As I said in my comments, "have you ever gone to jail/church/the dentist?" is perfectly fine in English (whereas "have you ever been to jail?" would be strange), so counting hits for "have you ever gone to" in a COCA search doesn't actually tell you anything about the OP's question. I would expect native speakers to say "have you ever been* to China"* rather than "gone". – Peter Shor Jan 14 '19 at 19:51
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    @TaliesinMerlin: And in fact, none of those instances of "have you ever gone to" in COCA is followed by a country or a city. What follows them are words and phrases like K-Mart, the market, a duck dinner, a deli, a counselor ..." Saying "have you ever gone to China?" is not idiomatic. – Peter Shor Jan 14 '19 at 21:13
  • @Peter Shor, why would the kind of destination matter to the usage? It doesn't here, and the absence of a country example in a corpus does not suggest that the usage is not idiomatic. (The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.) As shown by my link and as I've learned through a lifetime of usage, "Have you ever gone to China" is a valid and idiomatic expression for me and many other readers of English, whether or not you recognize it. – TaliesinMerlin Jan 14 '19 at 21:47
  • @TaliesinMerlin: So the fact that there are something like 40 or 50 examples of "Have you ever been to [city or country]" (e.g., Paris, Duluth, Venice, Poland) and none of "Have you ever gone to [city or country]" in COCA means nothing? Finding examples of some usage on the web doesn't mean much. You can find Americans who say "We drug the boat across the sandbar." That doesn't mean it's standard English. – Peter Shor Jan 15 '19 at 03:03
  • @Peter Shor: That's correct. COCA is useful for showing instances of use, but it's not a comprehensive corpus, and shouldn't be used to deny that a usage is valid. That would employ a logical fallacy. I've already both shown and personally attested that the usage is valid among some speakers. If you don't believe me, that's fine, but you're not convincing me that the language I used all my life is not native. You're being a prescriptivist, rather than a describer of how language is actually used. It is idiomatic in English. – TaliesinMerlin Jan 15 '19 at 03:04
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – TaliesinMerlin Jan 15 '19 at 03:09

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