A story full of phrasal verbs

Så fungerar det

We want to sound natural in informal English, where phrasal verbs are everywhere. A phrasal verb is a verb with a particle whose meaning is often not literal: give up, put off, run into, turn out. Some can be split (pick it up), others cannot (run into her).

In a story, phrasal verbs make the style lively and spoken. Vary them and check each one in a dictionary, because the particle changes the meaning: turn up means arrive, but turn down means refuse. Keep formal alternatives for formal texts.

We set off early, but the car broke down, so we ended up walking the last ten kilometres.

Why English loves phrasal verbs

Ask learners of English what they find most difficult, and many will mention phrasal verbs: combinations like give up, put off, look after and get over. There are thousands of them, and their meanings are often impossible to guess. Why should looking after a child mean taking care of it, or putting off a meeting mean delaying it? Part of the answer lies in history. Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons, combined verbs with small words for direction, much as modern German and Swedish still do. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, thousands of French and Latin words entered English, especially in law, government and learning. Many of these became the formal alternatives to older phrasal verbs, which is why English today often has two ways of saying the same thing: find out and discover, put off and postpone, give up and surrender. This division helps to explain where phrasal verbs are found. In conversation, text messages and stories, they are extremely common. Native speakers rarely say "I will postpone the party" to a friend; they say "We'll have to put it off." In academic writing, legal documents and formal letters, the single Latin-based verb is usually preferred. Phrasal verbs are also remarkably productive. New ones keep appearing, often from technology: people log in, sign up, scroll down and back up their files. Existing phrasal verbs also gain new meanings over time. The best way to learn them is not from long alphabetical lists but in context. When you meet a phrasal verb in a book or a series, note the whole sentence, and try to use it yourself soon afterwards. Gradually, what seemed random starts to feel natural.

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1. Kursplan i engelska, Lgr22, Skolverket