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English LingQ Podcast 1.0, Ninety-nine: Phrasal Verbs and Adjectives

Ninety-nine: Phrasal Verbs and Adjectives

Steve: Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: What are we going to talk about today?

Jill: Well, Rosie would like us to speak a little bit about phrasal verbs, which we've done before on some other podcasts and so, I guess that's what we're going to speak about, phrasal verbs.

Steve: Well, you know, phrasal verbs is one of these subjects that is talked about a lot in English learning just as modals, okay: would, could, should, might, may, whatever, can. Phrasal verbs, it's really not that difficult. I mean I have a book here. It's Longman's Phrasal Verbs Dictionary and if we look through it, basically, what we're talking about is the combination of a verb with a preposition or a direction. So, we can, you know, “knuckle down”, “knuckle under”. We can “knock out”, “knock over”. We can, you know, “hold together”, “hold up”, “hold to”, “hold up as”.

The problem with the phrasal verbs is that it's not always obvious. If you just took like “hold up as”, you know, you hold someone up as an example of, you know, hard work or something. You know, “hold to”. You're going to hold someone to something. You know, you said you were going to stay late and finish your work. Now you want to go home early, no, I'm going to hold you to it.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: So, hold to, yeah, it's not obvious. Short of taking this dictionary and studying it…

Jill: …and memorizing a whole book.

Steve: And my experience is that you won't be successful in using them. What I think people should do is to become, as we always say, become a little…you know, start to notice these phrasal verbs. If there are some that you see and you don't understand what they mean, you can either look them up; you can get yourself Longman's Phrasal Verbs Dictionary.

Jill: And I think there are thousands of phrasal verb dictionaries.

Steve: You can go and Google phrasal verbs and you'll find online phrasal verbs dictionaries and if it's “going in”, “going up” or “bump into”, “bump off”, “bump up”, just look up “bump” and you'll get all of the, you know, phrasal verbs.

Jill: The bottom line is sort of that there are thousands of phrasal verbs, so there's no way we could possibly teach them all to people.

Steve: And, you know, people get frustrated for no good reason. You know, if you see a phrasal verb and you say I know the word “bump” and I know the word “up”, but I don't know what “bump up” means and then you get frustrated. Don't get frustrated. It's a new term for you; you're not going to know what it means. Look it up, which is easy enough to do on the Internet. If our dictionary provides you with a translation for that term, that's great. It won't always do that, unfortunately, because the dictionary…we may get a better dictionary, but right now it doesn't always do that. You may have to go to Google, put it in, save it as a term “bump up”, save it in your system. You'll probably find more examples within our library of where these terms are used. If that phrasal verb doesn't generate a lot of examples in LingQ, probably it's not that common; don't worry about it.

There won't be, necessarily, a carryover. Like “bump up”, to “bump up” is to push someone up, you know, you bump them up in terms of seniority or in terms of importance or priority.

Jill: But if you bump into somebody…

Steve: Exactly, you meet them on the street. But I was going to say that, you know, “kick up” may not relate to “bump up”.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Because we say kick up a storm.

Jill: Kick up your heels.

Steve: Kick up your heels, so there's a very good point. You know, sometimes the phrasal verb has to include more than the verb and the preposition or the direction word it also includes the next word, so we're now talking about a full-blown phrase. I think the only advice I would give is if you're interested in phrasal verbs save them. If our dictionary doesn't give a definition, look on Google and put the meaning into your Hint and start noticing them and start noticing the examples and reviewing the examples of where they're used. You may not find much of a pattern.

Jill: That's the thing and as we've mentioned many times before, the individual words, generally, have nothing to do with the meaning of the full phrasal verb.

Steve: Well, I wouldn't say that they have nothing to do with it, but it's difficult to come up with the meaning in your own language based on “go up”. Yeah, “go up”, maybe. “Give up”, no, no. Give up means to yield, so I think “throw up” means something else. As we say, I think they have to be looked upon individually. There is no overarching theory or explanation there that's going to help. So, I don't know if that helps, but that's where we would like to start the discussion on phrasal verbs. If people have other comments we'd be very happy to hear them.

Jill: I was going to say too, if you are a LingQ member, a Plus or Premium member, you can also -- when you save a phrasal verb like that -- click on the Ask Your Tutor link right in the LingQ widget and then you can post on the Ask Your Tutor Forum: Please help me with this verb, I don't understand it.

Steve: Right.

Now, I think the same person who asked you about phrasal verbs also asked about adverbs and adjectives.

Jill: She mentioned adjectives, yeah.

Steve: You know, again, we don't have more information than that to go on but, to some extent, yeah, obviously when you look up a word in the dictionary it will tell you whether it's an adjective or an adverb. Typically, an adverb is used to describe a verb or an adjective.

Jill: Adjective, yeah.

Steve: I think if this distinction is important to you then you might, you know, use your Tags, collect all your adjectives in one Tag List, so that you can review your adjectives. Obviously, there are certain endings that suggest it's an adjective. If it ends in “ive”, adjective, okay, adjective, “ive”, so: active, impulsive, repulsive and so forth.

Jill: An adjective always describes a noun.

Steve: Yeah, an adjective always describes a noun.

Jill: So, a person is beautiful. You know, that girl over there is beautiful, so that's an adjective, beautiful.

Steve: Right.

You could have more than one adjective. She's tall and beautiful or she's short and beautiful. I think one of the issues is where do the adjectives go. I think that causes some problems because in some languages they come after and in some they come before.

Jill: And in French it depends on the length of the adjective.

Steve: Right.

Jill: Usually the shorter ones come before and then the longer ones come after.

Steve: Right.

But, here again, I think these are things that, yeah, if you again Googled adjectives you'd probably find some rules. How useful those rules are will depend, you know, on the person, but if you were to save some common adjectives where you already know the meaning, you know, as I say over and over again, don't just save words that you don't know, save words in order to create examples. If you have trouble with adjectives, whatever the difficulty might be…

Jill: Save “nice” and “pretty” and “beautiful.”

Steve: “Green.”

Jill: “Green”, yeah.

Steve: Because you know you're going to get 25 examples and then you can review each example. Not only will you have a chance to review these examples and see the order in which these adjectives show up, very often, if these examples come from content that, hopefully, you've been listening to it will be a familiar context and all of this will help trigger that ability to remember and to remember it when you need it.

So, by all means, you know, if you are the kind of person who likes to have more of an explanation than we've given you here off the cuff, because very often the native speaker doesn't have a lot of these explanations, if you like more explanations there's no shortage of explanations on the Web. If you looked up adjectives and rules and stuff you'll find lots, but I would still recommend, with or without the explanations, that you use the functions of LingQ to create some real examples that come from context that is familiar to you, so you can see how these adjectives are used. In our Vocabulary Section use the Tags, you know, or you can even search by “ive” or “al” and so forth, which are adjective endings and so forth.

And I think you have to go to an appointment.

Jill: I do, I'm sorry.

Steve: So, we're going to stop it right there. Thank you very much Jill.

Jill: Thank you, bye, bye.


Ninety-nine: Phrasal Verbs and Adjectives Neunundneunzig: Phrasalverben und Adjektive Noventa y nueve: Verbos frasales y adjetivos Quatre-vingt-dix-neuf : Verbes et adjectifs phrastiques Novantanove: Verbi frasali e aggettivi 99句動詞と形容詞 Dziewięćdziesiąt dziewięć: Czasowniki frazowe i przymiotniki Noventa e nove: Verbos frasais e adjectivos Девяносто девять: фразовые глаголы и прилагательные Nittionio: Frasala verb och adjektiv Doksan dokuz: Phrasal Fiiller ve Sıfatlar Дев'яносто дев'ять: Фразові дієслова та прикметники 九十九:短语动词和形容词 九十九:片語動詞和形容詞

Steve: Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: What are we going to talk about today?

Jill: Well, Rosie would like us to speak a little bit about phrasal verbs, which we’ve done before on some other podcasts and so, I guess that’s what we’re going to speak about, phrasal verbs.

Steve: Well, you know, phrasal verbs is one of these subjects that is talked about a lot in English learning just as modals, okay: would, could, should, might, may, whatever, can. Phrasal verbs, it’s really not that difficult. I mean I have a book here. It’s Longman’s Phrasal Verbs Dictionary and if we look through it, basically, what we’re talking about is the combination of a verb with a preposition or a direction. So, we can, you know, “knuckle down”, “knuckle under”. Así que podemos, ya sabes, "arrimar el hombro", "arrimar el hombro". Итак, мы можем, вы знаете, «опустить», «опустить». We can “knock out”, “knock over”. Podemos "noquear", "derribar". Мы можем «выбить», «опрокинуть». We can, you know, “hold together”, “hold up”, “hold to”, “hold up as”. Podemos, ya sabes, "aguantar juntos", "aguantar", "aguantar hasta", "aguantar como". Nous pouvons, vous savez, "tenir ensemble", "tenir", "tenir à", "tenir comme". Мы можем, вы знаете, «держаться вместе», «держаться», «держаться», «держаться как».

The problem with the phrasal verbs is that it’s not always obvious. If you just took like “hold up as”, you know, you hold someone up as an example of, you know, hard work or something. Si vous venez de prendre comme "considérer comme", vous savez, vous considérez quelqu'un comme un exemple de, vous savez, de travail acharné ou quelque chose comme ça. Если вы просто взяли как «держись как», вы знаете, вы держите кого-то в качестве примера тяжелой работы или чего-то еще. Eğer sadece "örnek göstermek" gibi bir şey yapsaydınız, bilirsiniz, birini örnek gösterirsiniz, bilirsiniz, sıkı çalışma ya da başka bir şey. You know, “hold to”. Вы знаете, «держись». You’re going to hold someone to something. You know, you said you were going to stay late and finish your work. Tu sais, tu as dit que tu allais rester tard et finir ton travail. Now you want to go home early, no, I’m going to hold you to it. Ahora quieres irte a casa temprano, no, te voy a retener. Maintenant tu veux rentrer tôt, non, je vais t'y obliger.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: So, hold to, yeah, it’s not obvious. Short of taking this dictionary and studying it…

Jill: …and memorizing a whole book.

Steve: And my experience is that you won’t be successful in using them. What I think people should do is to become, as we always say, become a little…you know, start to notice these phrasal verbs. Ce que je pense que les gens devraient faire, c'est devenir, comme nous le disons toujours, devenir un peu… vous savez, commencer à remarquer ces verbes à particule. If there are some that you see and you don’t understand what they mean, you can either look them up; you can get yourself Longman’s Phrasal Verbs Dictionary. Si ves algunos y no entiendes lo que significan, puedes buscarlos; puedes hacerte con el diccionario Longman's Phrasal Verbs. S'il y en a que vous voyez et que vous ne comprenez pas ce qu'ils signifient, vous pouvez soit les rechercher ; vous pouvez vous procurer le dictionnaire des verbes à particule de Longman. Если есть некоторые, которые вы видите, и вы не понимаете, что они имеют в виду, вы можете либо посмотреть их; Вы можете получить словарь фразовых глаголов Longman.

Jill: And I think there are thousands of phrasal verb dictionaries.

Steve: You can go and Google phrasal verbs and you’ll find online phrasal verbs dictionaries and if it’s “going in”, “going up” or “bump into”, “bump off”, “bump up”, just look up “bump” and you’ll get all of the, you know, phrasal verbs. Steve: Puedes buscar phrasal verbs en Google y encontrarás diccionarios online de phrasal verbs y si se trata de "going in", "going up" o "bump into", "bump off", "bump up", simplemente busca "bump" y obtendrás todos los, ya sabes, phrasal verbs. Steve: Je kunt phrasal-werkwoorden Googlen en je zult online phrasal-werkwoordenboeken vinden en als het "naar binnen gaan", "naar boven gaan" of "tegenaan botsen", "stoten", "stoten", kijk gewoon omhoog " hobbel' en je krijgt alle, je weet wel, werkwoorden. Стив: Вы можете перейти к фразовым глаголам Google и найти онлайн-словари фразовых глаголов, и если он «входит», «поднимается» или «врезается», «поднимается», «поднимается», просто смотрите « поднять », и вы получите все, вы знаете, фразовые глаголы.

Jill: The bottom line is sort of that there are thousands of phrasal verbs, so there’s no way we could possibly teach them all to people. Jill: La conclusión es que hay miles de phrasal verbs, así que es imposible enseñárselos todos a la gente.

Steve: And, you know, people get frustrated for no good reason. Steve : Et, vous savez, les gens sont frustrés sans raison valable. You know, if you see a phrasal verb and you say I know the word “bump” and I know the word “up”, but I don’t know what “bump up” means and then you get frustrated. Vous savez, si vous voyez un verbe à particule et que vous dites que je connais le mot "bump" et que je connais le mot "up", mais que je ne sais pas ce que "bump up" signifie et que vous devenez frustré. Don’t get frustrated. It’s a new term for you; you’re not going to know what it means. C'est un nouveau terme pour vous; vous ne saurez pas ce que cela signifie. Это новый термин для вас; Вы не будете знать, что это значит. Look it up, which is easy enough to do on the Internet. Búsquelo, que es bastante fácil de hacer en Internet. If our dictionary provides you with a translation for that term, that’s great. It won’t always do that, unfortunately, because the dictionary…we may get a better dictionary, but right now it doesn’t always do that. You may have to go to Google, put it in, save it as a term “bump up”, save it in your system. Mogelijk moet u naar Google gaan, het invoeren, opslaan als een term "bump-up", opslaan in uw systeem. You’ll probably find more examples within our library of where these terms are used. If that phrasal verb doesn’t generate a lot of examples in LingQ, probably it’s not that common; don’t worry about it.

There won’t be, necessarily, a carryover. No habrá, necesariamente, un traspaso. Like “bump up”, to “bump up” is to push someone up, you know, you bump them up in terms of seniority or in terms of importance or priority. Como "bump up", "bump up" es empujar a alguien hacia arriba, ya sabes, lo empujas hacia arriba en términos de antigüedad o en términos de importancia o prioridad. Comme "bouger", "bouger" c'est pousser quelqu'un vers le haut, vous savez, vous le bousculez en termes d'ancienneté ou en termes d'importance ou de priorité.

Jill: But if you bump into somebody… Джилл: Но если ты столкнешься с кем-то ...

Steve: Exactly, you meet them on the street. Exacto, te los encuentras por la calle. But I was going to say that, you know, “kick up” may not relate to “bump up”. Pero iba a decir que, ya sabes, "dar una patada hacia arriba" puede no estar relacionado con "dar un golpe hacia arriba". Maar ik wilde zeggen dat, weet je, "kick-up" misschien niets te maken heeft met "bump-up". Но я собирался сказать, что, знаете, «поднять» может не относиться к «поднять».

Jill: Right.

Steve: Because we say kick up a storm. Steve: Porque decimos patear una tormenta. Steve : Parce que nous disons déclencher une tempête. Стив: Потому что мы говорим, подними бурю.

Jill: Kick up your heels. Jill: Kick up your heels. Джилл: Поднимите каблуки.

Steve: Kick up your heels, so there’s a very good point. You know, sometimes the phrasal verb has to include more than the verb and the preposition or the direction word it also includes the next word, so we’re now talking about a full-blown phrase. Sabes, a veces el verbo frasal tiene que incluir más que el verbo y la preposición o la palabra de dirección también incluye la siguiente palabra, así que ahora estamos hablando de una frase completa. I think the only advice I would give is if you’re interested in phrasal verbs save them. If our dictionary doesn’t give a definition, look on Google and put the meaning into your Hint and start noticing them and start noticing the examples and reviewing the examples of where they’re used. Si nuestro diccionario no da una definición, busca en Google y pon el significado en tu Hint y empieza a fijarte en ellos y empieza a fijarte en los ejemplos y a repasar los ejemplos de dónde se utilizan. You may not find much of a pattern.

Jill: That’s the thing and as we’ve mentioned many times before, the individual words, generally, have nothing to do with the meaning of the full phrasal verb.

Steve: Well, I wouldn’t say that they have nothing to do with it, but it’s difficult to come up with the meaning in your own language based on “go up”. Steve: Bueno, yo no diría que no tienen nada que ver, pero es difícil dar con el significado en tu propio idioma a partir de "subir". Стив: Ну, я бы не сказал, что они не имеют к этому никакого отношения, но трудно придумать значение на вашем родном языке, основанное на «идти вверх». Yeah, “go up”, maybe. Sí, "subir", tal vez. “Give up”, no, no. "Rendirse", no, no. Give up means to yield, so I think “throw up” means something else. Renunciar significa ceder, así que creo que "vomitar" significa otra cosa. Give up означает уступать, поэтому я думаю, что "throw up" означает что-то другое. As we say, I think they have to be looked upon individually. Como decimos, creo que hay que considerarlos individualmente. There is no overarching theory or explanation there that’s going to help. No hay ninguna teoría o explicación global que pueda ayudar. So, I don’t know if that helps, but that’s where we would like to start the discussion on phrasal verbs. If people have other comments we’d be very happy to hear them.

Jill: I was going to say too, if you are a LingQ member, a Plus or Premium member, you can also -- when you save a phrasal verb like that -- click on the Ask Your Tutor link right in the LingQ widget and then you can post on the Ask Your Tutor Forum: Please help me with this verb, I don’t understand it.

Steve: Right.

Now, I think the same person who asked you about phrasal verbs also asked about adverbs and adjectives.

Jill: She mentioned adjectives, yeah.

Steve: You know, again, we don’t have more information than that to go on but, to some extent, yeah, obviously when you look up a word in the dictionary it will tell you whether it’s an adjective or an adverb. Typically, an adverb is used to describe a verb or an adjective.

Jill: Adjective, yeah.

Steve: I think if this distinction is important to you then you might, you know, use your Tags, collect all your adjectives in one Tag List, so that you can review your adjectives. Obviously, there are certain endings that suggest it’s an adjective. If it ends in “ive”, adjective, okay, adjective, “ive”, so: active, impulsive, repulsive and so forth.

Jill: An adjective always describes a noun.

Steve: Yeah, an adjective always describes a noun.

Jill: So, a person is beautiful. You know, that girl over there is beautiful, so that’s an adjective, beautiful.

Steve: Right.

You could have more than one adjective. She’s tall and beautiful or she’s short and beautiful. I think one of the issues is where do the adjectives go. I think that causes some problems because in some languages they come after and in some they come before.

Jill: And in French it depends on the length of the adjective.

Steve: Right.

Jill: Usually the shorter ones come before and then the longer ones come after.

Steve: Right.

But, here again, I think these are things that, yeah, if you again Googled adjectives you’d probably find some rules. How useful those rules are will depend, you know, on the person, but if you were to save some common adjectives where you already know the meaning, you know, as I say over and over again, don’t just save words that you don’t know, save words in order to create examples. If you have trouble with adjectives, whatever the difficulty might be…

Jill: Save “nice” and “pretty” and “beautiful.”

Steve: “Green.” Steve: "Verde".

Jill: “Green”, yeah.

Steve: Because you know you’re going to get 25 examples and then you can review each example. Not only will you have a chance to review these examples and see the order in which these adjectives show up, very often, if these examples come from content that, hopefully, you’ve been listening to it will be a familiar context and all of this will help trigger that ability to remember and to remember it when you need it. No sólo tendrás la oportunidad de repasar estos ejemplos y ver el orden en que aparecen estos adjetivos, muy a menudo, si estos ejemplos provienen de contenidos que, con suerte, has estado escuchando será un contexto familiar y todo esto ayudará a activar esa capacidad de recordar y recordarlo cuando lo necesites.

So, by all means, you know, if you are the kind of person who likes to have more of an explanation than we’ve given you here off the cuff, because very often the native speaker doesn’t have a lot of these explanations, if you like more explanations there’s no shortage of explanations on the Web. If you looked up adjectives and rules and stuff you’ll find lots, but I would still recommend, with or without the explanations, that you use the functions of LingQ to create some real examples that come from context that is familiar to you, so you can see how these adjectives are used. In our Vocabulary Section use the Tags, you know, or you can even search by “ive” or “al” and so forth, which are adjective endings and so forth.

And I think you have to go to an appointment. Y creo que tienes que ir a una cita.

Jill: I do, I’m sorry. Джил: Да, извините.

Steve: So, we’re going to stop it right there. Thank you very much Jill.

Jill: Thank you, bye, bye.