Re: OT: English and schizophrenia

On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Raymond Brown wrote:

[snip]
> English verbs are about the easiest you'll ever see if you happen to be an
> English speaker!  But my own experience of my continental neighbors is
> somewhat different.
>
> For many years we had foreign language students stay with us for their year
> in Britain.  I'd always assumed the thing they'd complain most about
> regarding English was our crazy orthography.  Not a bit of it.  Almost
> without exception the biggest grumble was "English phrasal verbs".
You know, I've heard similar from English language-learners.  And if
you think about it, some of them seem to me really hard to guess, you
just have to know them:

to hand out (out of what?)
to give a hand, to give a helping hand (the latter is a bit easier to
figure out, for me)
to wear out (out of what?)
to turn in (for the night, for the evening)
to turn up (at someone's place, unexpectedly)
to turn out (of someone's house, probably that someone's own)

I'm sure there are better examples.

YHL

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