How English Works #1
How English Works 1
Phrasal Verbs
Intermediate
In this series, we learn about English grammar differently than usual. There are no charts, no memorization, no confusing rules with millions of exceptions. Instead, we look at interesting aspects of English and how you can understand them. Don't worry if you fully understand. Notice these while you're immersing in English, and it'll all make sense with time.
Hi, my name is Ben. Today, we're going to be talking a little bit about how English works. This is a series of grammar-like videos, but they're not your typical grammar lessons. In these videos, we're not going to be doing any drills, we're not going to be looking at any charts, and you're not going to be memorizing anything. Instead, we're focused on how to better understand English and the things that we do and say in this crazy and wild language that is English. So, let's get started. And I want to talk about phrasal verbs. Because this is a very common vebs. It's not a spelling class, sorry. Phrasal verbs, let's talk about phrasal verbs today. Because this is something that is quite difficult for a lot of English learners. But they're really powerful in English and we use them all the time. We make use of them, let's see, we put them to use all the time, that's a phrasal verb. So, first, let's look at a regular verb, right? The regular verbs that we use every day are things like eat, play, or go, right? A phrasal verb is called a phrasal verb because it has many parts to it, making it more like a little phrase. And this is why The word word is hard to define. Is a phrasal verb one word or two? Kind of both because, for example, let's look at something like eat up or play, let's do it below. Eat up, play around, go out. These are all phrasal verbs and they function as a unit. If I say to somebody, you better eat up, that eat and up are together as one single thing and they're one unit of meaning. It's not eat plus up because eat up, that doesn't make any sense. Instead, this combination of words is making something completely different. Usually it's related, but not always, right? So for the example, play around, to play is like to play a game or to play outside, to have fun, right? To have fun. But to play around is a little bit more like you're you're joking or you're doing something a little bit goofier with somebody and so you like there's no logical reason why around like. going around something is the choice of other word for the phrasal verb. It's just what we use. And so this sort of around generally means that there is like kind of like a feeling of like it's not exactly playing, but it's so it's like close to it. But it's again, it's something totally different, right? It's to joke or it's to play lightly or to play in a goofy way. And so, for example, you might see some cats that are on the ground, and you could say they're playing, but they're also playing around, right? They're having a good time, they're playing. Or if a friend comes up to you and they tell you a joke, but it doesn't feel like a joke, and you go, what? That was mean. And they go, oh, sorry, I was just playing around. I didn't mean to upset you. I just wanted to play around. Let's go back to Eat Up, though. This one means not literally up, but it means to finish something completely and to completely eat, right? And so we often will say, eat up, come on, go eat, right? Instead of telling to a child eat, which is very direct, it's like do the thing, it's like eat up, right? Enjoy your food, eat all of it, is the idea behind eat up. And so these little words don't really mean what they usually mean, right? It's not literally up, it's not literally around. And in the case of out, it can be, right? You can go outside, right? Go out. But it also means to date or to see somebody romantically is also go out because you go out with them often. And so you might say, oh yeah, me and my girlfriend have been going out for a year. And that means we've been dating, we've been seeing each other. So these are some examples of phrasal verbs that don't really have additional meaning. Sorry, this part doesn't literally modify the meaning. There are some that look like phrasal verbs, things like to go up. right that literally means to go to do to do to do to do to go upwards right so that's a literal one there are plenty of literal ones but you can usually notice when we use a phrasal verb that doesn't really make sense otherwise another good example are ones that do have similar like connected words so for example at like the modifier at is a common one and that often means like in the direction to right so to if you were to say something like to eat at which isn't a verb that you're gonna find in the dictionary, but we would understand it as like somebody's sort of like eating loudly at you to be rude, right? If you say, hey, can you be a little quieter while you're eating? Cause they're, right, they're very loud. You go, that's kind of gross. Can you be quieter please? And maybe they go, and they kind of eat at you, right? It's a little bit aggressive. Another one like that is like kick at, right? Let's make these colors the same. So if you kick at somebody, right? Like you kick, but you don't really fully do it, right? And so you kick towards them, but like, but you're kicking at them, right? So this is a little bit more literal than eat at, and then you can get fully literal with something like throw at, right? So to throw something at is to literally be like here catch But you can also say like to throw at is A like an insult right he threw an insult at me is not literal, but it's pretty much the same It's a a figurative definition of the literal thing Another one that I thought of is out and which can sort of be similar to at, but it refers to something that's like going outwards, away from you. Rather than going to somebody else, it's away from you. And so to eat out is to eat at a different, somewhere that's not your home, right? So we're gonna go eat out tonight at a nice restaurant, right? That's eating out, because you're eating away from yourself, outside in this case, literally. or to kick out, right, is when you kick somebody so that they have to go out of the place or away from you. And you might do that with a roommate or somebody that lives in your house. A lot of kids get kicked out of their parents' house when they're 18, right? Their parents go, go live somewhere else. Go away. I'm kicking you out. Same thing with throw out, right? If you throw out something, it's to put it away from yourself to trash it, right? So like garbage you were going to throw out, right? And so like, for example, if you have a plate of food, you've mostly finished eating, but you didn't quite eat everything. And you go, man, I don't really want to throw this out, but it's so little. Do you want it? Right. And you're saying, I don't want to throw it away. That's another one, too. Away can be a similar thing, but like certain words don't work with away. Right. To throw away. Throw away is let's get a green in here. Throw away is good. Throw out is good. Kick away. is not, that doesn't really work. That would be like a literal thing, like to kick something away from yourself, but it doesn't have the same meaning of kick out. To eat out is fine, and then to eat away, that's just weird. Like, I guess it would be understood, but it's just weird. And so you can see that there's not always interchangeable words for these kinds of phrasal verbs. So, there are hundreds of thousands of potential phrasal verbs because you can make them up. We use them all the time. There's many that have non-logical definitions, right? If you squint, it kind of makes sense, right? Something like to look up. Kind of makes sense, like if you think about you're in the dictionary, sort of looking up and down something to find a word, that kind of makes sense, but not really. And so there's tons that are like that, right? There's hundreds and hundreds, potentially thousands. And then there's also a bunch that are just completely nonsensical. Well, actually blow up is sort of like that. Because when you blow something, until it explodes upwards, right? It kinda makes sense. But there are also ones that just don't make sense. You have to know them. But what I recommend doing is going out and listening for them, right? You wanna find them in real English. Go watch my videos, go watch my comics videos, and listen for phrasal verbs. That's the big thing you're gonna wanna do because that's going to help you to learn them a lot more naturally because you can't just memorize them. because they're not, you can't just memorize the verb because they often change, but you also can't just memorize what the other part does because it's not always the same. And so just hearing a lot of them, getting used to it is what you have to do. You have to get used to things. I will also say that you can, something that's annoying about phrasal verbs is they can appear in different parts of the sentence. So just be aware of that, right? So the example I like is, can you blow out the candle? Let me move this around a little bit. Can you blow the candle? Let's make it a little bit tighter. Here we go, there we go. Out, or blow out the candle. So, candle, okay. Can you blow out the candle? Total normal question. That means to, right, on a candle, although actually let me, just for, God, hang on, okay. There we go, keeping things the same. That's totally normal, right, you're blowing. so that the candle goes out, it's off, it's not on fire. However, you can totally hear this the other way where it's actually like this. Can you blow the candle out? That's also totally normal. And so you have to start to learn to notice where these words are connected because they appear together. If you actually said, can you blow the candle? That makes no sense. That is a wrong sentence. You'll never hear that. And you also can't say, can you the candle out? But you need the blow there as well. And you also will never see something like, can you out blow the candle? That would be something that just doesn't work either. And so just be aware that you're gonna find things like this where it goes verb and then maybe something else and then maybe you find that other piece somewhere later. And so just be aware when you're listening and you're watching and reading something that you might have to look in a couple different places to figure out what something means. You get used to it over time and it becomes pretty simple. However, one other thing that I want to mention is that some words, some specific verbs, you cannot move the other part. And so this here, in the case of blowout, yeah, you can move it around. That's fine. You can separate it. You can keep it together. Anything goes. But some verbs, you can't. They have to stay together. Um, let's see. Eat up. Yeah. So eat up is a good example actually. Um, but also that's all good. It doesn't really have like a thing like eat up the food. It doesn't make sense. Kick out, kick my friend out, kick away, kick, throw away, throw the garbage away. Eat out. Yeah, so here is an example. We're gonna eat. Change color. Eat out. at our favorite restaurant. I'm going to shorten the words here because I don't want to write them all out. We're going to eat out at our favorite restaurant today or whenever. You cannot say, we're going to eat at our favorite restaurant out. That doesn't make sense. And so there's certain words like that where you have to keep them together and some that you can keep them apart. And so as you're immersing, just be aware of when that happens. Notice when things are always together. Notice when they're completely separated. But that's all that I have for you today on phrasal verbs. It's a pretty complicated topic, which is why we're not trying to memorize anything. We're not trying to look at charts. Go out and understand English as much as you can. And whenever you have a problem, look up the phrasal verb in a dictionary and it will probably come up. And that's gonna be a lot more beneficial to your English learning than trying to memorize all the phrasal verbs. Anyway, thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this episode and wanna see more how English works, make sure to let me know down in the description and ask me what questions you have. What are some things that you don't understand in English that you want me to explain because this is the first episode and I'd like to make more, but I'm not sure what your questions are. So tell me and I'll make an episode about it. Anyways, that's all that I have. See you next time and buh-bye.
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