How the words we teach English language learners changed

Re:How the words we teach English language learners changed by fluoridation on Sunday August 02, 2026 @10:19PM (#49150494)

As a non-native speaker, English does have (what I think is) a rather unique phenomenon where the same verb can be used to express different shades of meaning (or sometimes wildly different meanings) depending on whether or which proposition is attached to it. "To step" means to take a step, but "to step up" means to confront something. When you "talk to" someone you converse with them, and when you "talk at" someone you monologue at them.

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Re:How the words we teach English language learners changed by tdeck on Monday August 03, 2026 @01:45AM (#49151663)

English uses a lot of prepositional phrase idioms. Now that I'm learning Japanese, I find there are relatively few like that (although not zero, compare "と相談" to discuss with and に相談" to consult). But it instead uses many, many compound verb expressions that are often not intiutive to a learner and just have to be memorized, so the effect is similar.

It also has words with opposite meanings like 断る (kotowaru, to reject, to ask permission), and 適当 (tekitou, suitable, appropriate, half-assed, careless).

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Re:How the words we teach English language learners changed by fluoridation on Monday August 03, 2026 @03:32AM (#49152411)

Thanks. I'm learning Japanese too. The other day I learned that 在る can be used with either で or に and didn't make this connection, though I guess whether it counts as different meanings depends on how you look at it, since in both cases you're specifying the position in spacetime of something.

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Re:How the words we teach English language learners changed by Gander5739 on Monday August 03, 2026 @05:14AM (#49153200)

> [Japanese] also has words with opposite meanings

These are known as contronyms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contronym).

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Re:How the words we teach English language learners changed by tdeck on Monday August 03, 2026 @06:59AM (#49154058)

Thank you! It's funny how I have never thought of most of these. The only similar word I could think of was "biweekly".

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Re:How the words we teach English language learners changed by DiogenesKynikos on Monday August 03, 2026 @04:23AM (#49152789)

This is a feature among the Germanic languages (of which English is one).

In German, these are called splittable verbs, and they can appear in two forms: "upstep" and "step up," depending on the sentence structure. That makes "upstep" / "step up" seem more like a separate verb from "step," rather than just being the same verb with an adverb added on.

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Re:How the words we teach English language learners changed by schoen on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @12:52AM (#49164471)

My German teachers translated "trennbare Verben" as "separable verbs":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_verb

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Re:How the words we teach English language learners changed by gmac on Monday August 03, 2026 @04:48AM (#49152982)

These are called phrasal verbs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phrasal_verbs

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