Monday 4 August 2008

Phrasal Verbs

When a Spanish speaker tries to speak in English, his accent is particularly recognizable. This is particularly true when we talk about vocabulary items. Latin cognate words come up more easily in our conversations.When native speakers listen to us, the first thing they think is how weird our use of their own language is.

It is indeed surprising for me that a non-native speaker, as Joseph Conrad was, could write such nice pieces of literature. Of course very few of us would be able to reach this mastery of the language. We can improve our English though. One of the ways in which we can improve is by learning/acquiring an acceptable amount of phrasal verbs.

I would not write in more detail about them as I have enclosed a grammar summary below, but please take into account that the use and knowledge of phrasal verbs is an advantage when trying to learn "good English".