English: Learning to use phrasal verbs in English is the best step to fluency. Come in and find out !

Come in and find out (meaning hereinkommen und herausfinden - not aus Ausgang finden ! ) are two examples of phrasal verbs.

These are other examples of everyday phrasal verbs: sit down (hin setzen), stand up (stehen), get up (aufstehen/wecken), look after (sich auf jemand oder etwas kümmern), put on (anziehen), take off (ausziehen), call off (absagen), put off (Termin verschieben), put forward an idea (etwas vorschlagen), call back (zurückrufen).

Phrasal verbs are verbs (go, take, keep, make etc...) together with a preposition or an adverb (for, to, in, out, after, over...)

In contrast, latinate verbs are the verbs like "congregate" (sich versammeln/sich treffen), "cancel" (absagen), "postpone" (Termin verschieben), "propose" (etwas vorschlagen). These verbs have a Latin root.

Phrasal verbs are used by native speakers in everyday spoken English and in less formal written texts. It would be strange for a native speaker to say:

It's my birthday tomorrow, so, I'm going to congregate with my friends after work.

Instead of "congregate" we would say "get together"; "I'm getting together with my friends".

So why do we have these two kinds of verbs?

One of the theories I know, takes us back to the time of the early settlers of England who spoke Anglo-Saxon dialects. It was typical in these dialects to use prepositions to describe action and movement, to give more meaning, to give more excitement and give colour to stories.

For example, "we JUMPED OVER the fire", "RAN AFTER the stag", "CLIMBED UP the tree", "SAT DOWN to talk", "RAN AWAY from the wolf",...

In 1066 when England was conquered by the French speaking William of Normandy (also known as "William the Conqueror") the country was put under the tight control of the feudal system and laws. This system was managed by educated monks and clerks whose working language was Latin. Thus, the ruling classes spoke a different language from that of the original inhabitants. Eventually people began to use a combination of the two languages where the Latin root words had a formal or official sound and the traditional Anglo-Saxon language, with its many phrasal verbs, was spoken by everybody in informal situations.

Even today when you read English legal documents you find a lot of non-Anglo-Saxon words like "affidavit" (schriftliche eidesstattliche Erklärung) or "bailiff" (Gerichtsvollzieher) or "de facto spouse" (Lebensgefährte), in everyday English this would be "common-law wife" or "partner".

When I was teaching in Spain my students had real trouble figuring out or understanding the meaning of phrasal verbs as they are not part of Latin languages.
On the other hand, in modern German (another Anglo-Saxon root language), trennbareVerben are also very common. Think about nachschauen (to look something up in a book), zuruckückblicken/zurückdenken (to look back on / over something), ausschimpfen (to tell somebody off), aufgeben/resignieren (to give up), aufmuntern/aufheitern (to cheer somebody up), the list goes on and on.

I am not suggesting that they are necessarily easy to learn for German speakers. They can be tricky too.

As a learner of English you should be aware of two main problems with phrasal verbs:

1. Some phrasal verbs have literal meanings and others don't. For example,
Go away! = verschwinde!
Go away on holiday = wegfahren
Here the preposition tells us directly what we mean.

But consider the phrasal verb "pick up" in these three examples:

1. I dropped my books and she helped me to pick them up.
2. Tomorrow I have to pick up my brother from the airport.
3. When I was in Moscow I picked up a little Russian.

Here "pick up" has multiple meanings. In the first sentence it means "aufheben", for example from the floor. This is another example of a phrasel verb with a literal meaning.

In the second meaning it means "abholen", and in the third sentence it has a different meaning, "aufschnappen" or "mitkriegen" in the sense of learning a language informally (not in a school). In the third sentence a person could understand "pick up" as abschleppen / aufreißsen (for sexual purposes), which could cause a funny misunderstanding.

People always figure out the meaning from the context or situation.

2. The other main problem with phrasal verbs is that there aren't any exact grammar rules concerning the position of the particle (the preposition or adverb that comes with the verb). Some verbs can be separated from the particle by the object of the sentence, others not.

For example, we can say;

I am LOOKING AFTER my friend's dog while she is on holiday.

but not: I am LOOKING my friend's dog AFTER while she is on holiday.

The verb "look after" cannot be split with an object (the something or somebody). You cannot say, "please look my dog over", only "please look after my dog".
Good dictionaries, like the "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary", always show you whether the verb and preposition can be separated or not.
For example, you might see " pick (smby) up (smby)". In this case you can separate the verb and preposition with the object, like this:

"I went to the airport to pick Mr. Harris up" or "I went to the airport to pick up Mr. Harries".

As there are so many phrasal verbs in English I would recommend you start slowly by making your own list of the ones you use the most.

Here is a little list of useful ones to start with:

carry on = weitermachen
come up against a problem = (Problem) auftreten
do away with = abschaffen
fall apart = auseinander fallen
fall out = sich streiten
get along = sich mit jemandem verstehen
go on = weitermachen


Vocabulary in this article:
educated monks and clerks: gebildet Mönche und Berater
eventually: schließlich
fluency: Flüssigkeit/Gewandtheit/Eleganz
give colour to stories: (mehr) Farbe verleihen
in contrast: im Gegensatz/dagegen
inhabitants: Einwohner(in)
Latin root: lateinisch Stamm / Wurzelwort
literal: wörtlich / eigentliche Bedeutung
movement: Bewegung
native speakers: Muttersprachler(in)
on the other hand: anderseits
stag: Hirsch
the list goes on and on (kein Ende nehmen.
tricky: knifflig/verzwickt

Author: Gareth Orsola Landers