I noticed how many of the verbs in English can mean different things depending on what word comes next, e.g.
Put
Put down
Put up
Put upon
Put on (wear)
English has so many words that mean the same thing, it’s amazing, astonishing, bewildering and flabbergasting, there was a thief, mugger, robber, bandit… Who stole, robbed, nicked, thieved from me… I don’t know how anyone ever learns all the English words for stuff, I honestly don’t know how I have.
It also made me reflect on how languages are just noises we’ve all agreed to make at each other. The rules try to match the language and fail, not the other way around.
Recently I was also thinking about how interesting it is that some words we use are SO OLD, and we just… use them like it’s no big deal, but if we we’re transported back thousands of years, people were still calling vanilla something very similar to vanilla and arteries something very similar to arteries, and that is super cool to me.
English-learning books call those phrasal verbs and there are entire chapters focused on them. I remember them as the most hated part of English lessons.
I noticed how many of the verbs in English can mean different things depending on what word comes next, e.g.
English has so many words that mean the same thing, it’s amazing, astonishing, bewildering and flabbergasting, there was a thief, mugger, robber, bandit… Who stole, robbed, nicked, thieved from me… I don’t know how anyone ever learns all the English words for stuff, I honestly don’t know how I have.
It also made me reflect on how languages are just noises we’ve all agreed to make at each other. The rules try to match the language and fail, not the other way around.
Recently I was also thinking about how interesting it is that some words we use are SO OLD, and we just… use them like it’s no big deal, but if we we’re transported back thousands of years, people were still calling vanilla something very similar to vanilla and arteries something very similar to arteries, and that is super cool to me.
English-learning books call those phrasal verbs and there are entire chapters focused on them. I remember them as the most hated part of English lessons.
Phrasal verbs can often feel weird and arbitrary.
Many of them are more or less intuitive:
But then there’s:
Putting out the fire is pretty strange taken literally. Out where?
The fact that they’re the exact opposites of the above doesn’t help.