Week of 13th August
The Games are over. Thank you London. We did not mess it up ! Now back to everyday life.
Prepositional verbs or phrasal verbs. I am sure many visitors to London have been left perplexed by this peculiar form of English. These expressions take the form of a verb used in conjunction with a preposition to create a new verb with a particular meaning.
Take for example break : break up, break down, break off, break in, break out. Here we have five different meanings starting with one single verb. They cannot be translated literally, at the risk of producing gibberish.
Correctly using this type of construction is the sign of someone who has mastered English. One should however be cautious in their use.
A young man who came to London to learn English was keen to try out his new knowledge of prepositional verbs. As the day’s classes came to an end he offered to give one of his female classmates a lift home, with a breezy ‘Can I throw you down someplace ?’.
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