Hello everyone and welcome back to a brand new episode of our new Easy English series, The Why Behind English.
For years, people have asked me many questions that go far beyond vocabulary lists.
You've asked me, you know, why do we do something in English this way?
Why is it this way?
Or, of course, how do we do this?
Or one of the common ones?
What is the difference between these two words or verbs which seem quite similar?
In this new series, I am going to act as a language detective with you.
We are going to become language detectives, solving some of the mysteries of English together.
And in doing so, answering your questions that you write in.
As always, I want to encourage you to write your questions in the comments or email me with them, and I will try to feature as many as I can.
That, I think, would make good topics on the why behind English.
It's going to be the place where we are going to explore these topics together.
So if you're new or if you've been listening for a while, make sure that you are following or subscribed to the podcast wherever you're listening.
Today we are going to be diving into two of the most requested topics, and a little extra too, starting with two of the trickiest words in the English language, and that is the verbs get and handle.
We're also going to be looking at the prepositions on in and at and talking a little bit about them.
So I hope this episode will be interesting for you.
Just a reminder before we look at our key vocabulary.
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Okay, let's look at our key vocabulary for today.
As always, I like to pick four or five words for you to actively listen on in each episode.
And in the why behind English, it's no different.
I want you to make sure you're practicing your listening skills. the first word today is preposition preposition a preposition is a small word in english like on in or at that shows the relationship between two things such as position or time so a preposition you can simply remember it as those little words which show the relationship between things on in at that type of thing the second is phrasal verb phrasal verb and this is a noun as well so a phrasal verb as a sorry a phrasal verb as a description is a verb combined with a preposition or an adverb to create a new meaning.
I have an entire book about phrasal verbs in English, which you can also find in the link below in the description.
Phrasal verbs are everywhere in English.
Some simple ones like to get up, to sit down, these are all phrasal verbs.
Our third word today is context, and this is a noun.
And context means the situation or information that helps you understand the meaning of something.
The final word for today is nuance.
Nuance.
And that is a very small difference in meaning, expression or sound.
So you can think of nuance as a very small difference.
So listen out for those words as we go forwards.
Now let's get stuck straight in to our first section today.
And actually, let's look at prepositions first.
So on, in or at.
Even if you know this, it's always useful to have another listen and to even practice listening to being taught in English.
So let's begin with a question that I get all the time.
How do I know when to use on, in or at?
And this is a great example of a why question because it's not about necessarily a simple rule.
It's about logic and context.
So you want to think of these three prepositions as a scale of how specific something is, how particular and we could say precise or accurate something is.
If we take the preposition at, it is the most specific, the most accurate.
It is used for a very precise point, a very accurate point in space or time.
Think of these as a dot on a map or a exact time.
For example, i'll meet you at that bus stop.
It's at an exact point.
Or i saw him standing at that corner, i will meet you at nine o'clock.
Then, if we look at in, so the word in when we're talking about location again, or specific points in time, it is used for a larger, enclosed space.
Think like a big box or a circle.
For example, I'm in the kitchen.
I'm in this city or the meeting is in room number 24.
It's a larger space, right?
Larger, often enclosed space that you can be inside.
Then if we look at on, it is used for a surface or a line.
So the book is on the table.
I am sitting on this chair in this room at my house.
Actually better to say in my house.
I could say in my house at nine o'clock, let's say to be very specific, but because the house is an enclosed space, it's better to say like a larger enclosed space, it's better to say in than at my house.
When we say at my house, it makes me think that we're meeting outside the house, but you know, at the front door, for example.
So you can be at a specific house, for example, in a neighborhood or in a city.
And you might be on a street because you're on the surface of something, right?
By thinking of this scale and these different ways, it can help you to solve the preposition puzzle.
And of course, not everything goes to this rule, to this context, but for most situations these will apply.
And over time, you will start to pick up a natural feel for the language. understanding when one thing is specifically used and with different contexts wherever you should use in at or on okay next let's tackle so let's investigate and look at two of the most I guess flexible and very useful verbs in English So someone wrote in and they asked about this and this is the verbs get and handle.
The meaning of these verbs changes completely depending on the context, and that can be quite confusing.
So I'm going to explain with each of the verbs some of the context.
You might need to recap this and maybe look at them in more detail, because it would be probably a lot to remember from just listening to this podcast.
But first, let's talk about get.
It's a really changing word.
You can use get with lots of different things.
So the key is to pay attention to the word that comes after get.
So when we say get plus an adjective afterwards, for example, tired, that's an adjective.
This means to become.
So get plus an adjective means to become often in most cases.
So for example, I got tired or I get tired.
Tired after work.
I become tired after work.
He got angry.
He became angry.
She is getting irritated or annoyed.
She is becoming irritated or annoyed.
Do you see the pattern?
So get plus an adjective means to become.
Now, let's go to get plus an object.
Get plus an object.
In that case and this is the one that most of you probably know already it means to receive or to obtain.
For example, I got a letter this morning.
I received a letter.
You can get a coffee from the machine.
You can receive or obtain a coffee from the machine.
That one's easy, so I'm not going to stay on it too long.
Then we have a third type of use of get, and I can't go through all of this today and you'll understand why.
So get plus a preposition or an adverb that those are phrasal verbs.
And these are the most difficult ones, because there's a lot of them and they have a totally new meaning.
So, for example, what time do you get up?
I need to get to the airport.
That, of course, means to arrive, so you can see there's loads of these and i would recommend, if people are listening and they're interested in these phrasal verbs, do check out that book.
Um, in the description below, phrasal verbs are easy.
It's a new book that i released this year that helps teach you phrasal verbs in english through short stories to learn income from context.
Okay, so we're going to look at another verb today, and that was by request, and this is handle, to handle, and this verb has two main meanings and the nuance here is important.
The fine detail or difference sorry, the fine difference is important.
The first is to handle something physically, and that means to touch, hold or move something.
So you want to be careful how you handle that package.
It's fragile.
So that's you touching it, holding it physically.
Now the second use of this is to handle a situation.
So this is something a bit more abstract, a bit bigger. not physically handling.
And that means to manage, deal with, or take care of a problem or a person.
So the manager knows how to handle difficult customers.
How are you going to handle all of that work?
And the why here is about context.
You know, we don't say with these verbs.
So if we take get or handle with get, we don't say I got up the package.
We say I picked up the package, but we do say I got up this morning.
So, with a lot of these phrasal verbs and ways to use them, context is, of course, the best way to understand.
With handle, you can see it's a little bit more straightforward with the two different versions.
But by paying attention to the words around get, for example you'll know exactly what the meaning has once you've learned them.
So hopefully that helps a little bit with those two verbs.
I know they're quite different, but hopefully it is helpful.
So we're going to look at another little common confusion.
That should probably be our last for today.
And then I want you to write in lots of more questions for me to answer.
So I also want to tackle then, a classic why question, and that is when do I use make and when do I use do, and why so?
While there are many exceptions with make and do and, like a lot of English, there are exceptions and the best I can do with explaining those or telling you how to learn them is to learn them, to memorize them, but Generally there is a simple rule of thumb that works most of the time.
So do is generally used for actions, tasks or obligations.
An obligation is something that you have to do.
It's about performing an action.
So I need to do my homework.
She does the dishes every night.
I need to do my work.
Then if we look at make.
Make is generally used for creating, producing or building something.
So my mother makes the best cookies.
I need to make a decision.
But of course, like I mentioned, there are many expressions that don't follow this rule, which is why it's quite a difficult one.
We say, for example, make a mess, not do a mess.
And do business.
We do business.
We don't make business.
But these are simply exceptions.
But by starting with the simple rule, you have a foundation to build on and at least get most of them right.
But all those little exceptions, you will build them into your vocabulary and your active vocabulary and your sentence structure with time.
Don't stress.
It will come more naturally if you put the effort in and you make sure that you're continuing to expand your vocabulary.
And not only your vocabulary, your vocabulary from context and in context.
And that's why I keep promoting phrasal verbs are easy so much as well, because I think it's so important to both learn phrasal verbs, but also vocabulary and language in context.
So thank you so much for joining me today.
I hope that this episode of the why behind English as part of the Easy English podcast was helpful.
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