hey aubrey how's it going today hi i'm great lindsay i have a funny question for you
okay go for it have you ever fallen down in public oh my gosh yeah um not that i can think of but
i've witnessed a friend of mine fall down and it was hilarious funny for everyone else so long
embarrassing for them but funny for everyone else i did in high school
it was a halftime show of a basketball game so like the whole school was there
and they called a few students down randomly to participate and maybe win a prize in like a game
where you're shooting and i was wearing these boots that had kind of not feel but like a big
fell down in front of the whole school everyone's laughing and it was not the end of the world but
i was thinking about this recently and i'm so glad social media didn't exist so no one was filming it
wasn't posted anywhere the only people who saw it were their present yes i loved it terrible posted
on social media for everyone to see so wait was it blurry time yeah a simpler time was it in the
stands then when you were coming down the stairs no it was while i like shot the basketball and i
went to grab it because it was like a competition during the halftime where some students had to
play like lightning where you do oh yeah yeah i know how to get them out bump out some people call
it yeah and i was playing that and like shot the basketball ran to grab it and kind of tripped and
fell so literally you were in the spotlight like everyone was watching you okay that's good stuff
worst case scenario it's funny how falling for adults is so funny and ridiculous but
for kids it's just what they do they fall on their skin their knees but for adults
it's the most ridiculous funny thing i like and for a teenager so embarrassing right
yeah toddlers follow that's whatever adults fall you're like it's fine but a teenager is mortified
it's something like that happens yeah you are truly lucky aubrey that there was no social media
back then right and i also went through that era of not really having social media in high school
thank goodness but now we have it so everything is different right i know and there are so many perks
my kids love social media i love it i love using it for all there's english it's so great to have
these quick tips idioms slaying that we can teach with a really quick social media video so if you
guys aren't following us on social media wherever you find your social media instagram linkedin
twitter youtube we're everywhere and in china with billy billy lrb and you can read longer articles
for some more deep dives into things on our wechat official account as well so wherever you are in
the world you can find all there's english on social media yes there are so many good ways
to connect with us guys go on there and check it out because you get stuff that you're not going to
see here on the podcast right videos commentary quizzes really fun ways to interact with us and
to learn so good all right exactly yes and this is a fun one we often will be able to teach a phrasal
verb on social media too we'll give a highlight of one specific phrasal verb and we got a question
about some phrasal verbs that we want to focus on today which is why we were talking about falling
down yes i love it this question of course i'd be happy this is from alexander here we go he says
your podcast is getting more and more popular in our country i start every morning listening
to your show while commuting to work so i wanted to thank you guys for doing such a great job well
thanks alexander aubry that's wonderful to hear isn't it welcome that feels great so awesome it's
so good and here's the question maybe you could help out with two phrasal verbs that i am stuck
on i'm stuck on i guess you could say just imagine i was walking down the street and i tripped over
something and i fell down so in this situation do i actually say i fell down or i fell over or
are they both good to go or are they both good because you can say that go with that suggestion
because looking at those two you would think they mean the same thing fall down fall over
oh that probably means the same thing no right there are subtle differences in that case you
would want to say i fell down if we tripped we say i fell down we wouldn't say i fell over but we're
gonna dive into why what are the nuance nuances how do you know which one to choose this is going
to be interesting yeah and you know just on a previous episode a few weeks ago i interviewed
someone who does his whole show all about phrasal verbs so go over there and look for that episode
guys it was a few weeks ago really good stuff to focus it's so tricky right aubry because if we
change one preposition the meaning changes quite a bit exactly right with fall we have fall in fall
off fall out fall over fall away there are so many different meanings depending on that second word
that preposition so you guys are aware of this phrasal verbs are tricky i love that you did that
interview lindsay so that we can have another resource for figuring out how to learn phrasal
verbs yeah guys you can find that by coming back to our blog and just type in alex bricker or i can
actually get the name for you the episode number right now that is episode 1742 guys so check out
that episode good stuff nice but i thought it would be interesting to talk a little bit just
about the verb fall without a preposition because okay it's actually a tricky verb on its own right
word because it can be both a noun and a verb and each of them has multiple meanings so let's
quickly talk about that first the noun lindsay what is the first meaning of the word fall
noun okay all right so to so the noun again is the act of falling right he had a bad fall
and i hear this a lot when i hear about elderly people does that ring a bell to you
aubrey definitely maybe you get a call from your mother you say or your grandmother had a bad fall
something like that right yeah and we're using that as a noun the fall is a thing that you're
talking about right yes i love it and a second meaning is a thing which falls and we usually
talk about this especially with snow or rain so for example you'd say yesterday we had the first
fall of snow and now we're describing we're using fall as a noun to talk about a thing that falls or
it falls out of the sky right yeah and i would say that this one feels to me a little bit more
formal what do you think aubrey does this feel a little more formal to you or do you use this
a lot it is a little more formal i feel like i hear it in song lyrics and i see it in poetry and
it's sort of a beautiful way of speaking to say the first fall of something like oh it's been a
long time since we had a fall of rain right and so you can switch that and say rainfall or snowfall
also a noun yeah we say it both ways and it is a little more informal but it's also a
very beautiful way of speaking i think yeah i mean guys if your personality is such that you
like to create poetry in your words there are a lot of people that love to speak
right they love to be articulate and kind of wordsmith things and kind of be more of an artist
we want to give you that option so this would be a good one to write down if you want to speak in
this poetic way okay definitely and then there's a third noun which is the season autumn we also call
fall would say i love fall it's my favorite season yeah three meanings for this one noun which most
people think of as a verb fall i love it is fall your favorite season aubrey what would you say
it used to be when i lived in the east when i lived in new york fall was my favorite season in
arizona it's my least favorite season because it's still so hot and miserable and nothing
really changes arizona is horrible it's just more longer summer oh yeah but in new england
new england is the place to be in the fall i don't know if you ever went up to vermont but
the leaves up there are just amazing in the fall yes we drove from new york up to quebec montreal
and so we saw all of the foliage from in between and then oh my goodness the leaves were beautiful
it was right when they were turning red and orange and yellow and it was breathtaking it's so good
it's so good so guys we've seen a lot of different ways to use the noun use this as
a noun what about as a verb let's get to the the more common one right the one that we're going to
then after we're going to tack on the preposition and make it a phrasal verb
right exactly so first of all just to move downward right yeah the snow fell all night now
you're talking about that snowfall but using it as a verb the rain falls the snow falls the snow fell
right i love it and then the second way guys is just to lose balance and collapse usually
this is talking about you your body but it could also be something else like um i have the worst
cabinets right now in my in my home and every time i open the cabinets a lot of times something just
falls down and breaks and everything like the olive oil spills all over the cabinet
it's so bad that happens to me with it my kids will put something in the fridge very precariously
oh yeah like a booby trap and then you open the fridge and something falls out and spills all over
the floor it's normal this is live having children yeah i can imagine i can't imagine exactly so that
just means something loses balance it collapses we could say it's so embarrassing to fall in
public especially if you're a teenager i love it and there are actually so many phrasal verbs
right aubry and we're not going to go into all of them today we don't need to do them all today
guys that'll break your brain to do it i don't want to break your brain that's why you got to
hit subscribe hit follow on this podcast you get future episodes we'll go into them later but there
are ones like fall in fall off fall out fall away right so many and the two from today's question
that we're going to focus in on are fall down and fall over which are very similar i understand why
the student could confuse these or wasn't sure which one to use so let's first talk about fall
down we use this more specifically it means you tripped it's resulting from tripping or stumbling
and sometimes it's just over your own feet like we were talking about how toddlers young children
fall down when they first learn to walk they might not be tripping over a rock or something
they just are tripping over their own feet yes i love that i love that it's so cute
i love it so just falling down tripling over your own feet um i had a friend in college who every
time she would attempt she wasn't very athletic so every time she would attempt to go for a jog
she would fall she would just like always have a fall during their phone that's such a nice way of
saying clumsy to just say she's not very athletic that's a good strategy here you guys if you think
someone is a little clumsy the kind way to say that is she's not super athletic yeah guys write
that one down as a bonus for today so good we could do another episode on that topic aubry on
how to be kind be kind i like that right i would prefer someone call me unathletic as opposed to
clumsy yes i love both are probably true okay so the second one we this is the same that you're
tripping you're falling but we talk about falling down something falling down the stairs falling
down a mountain right i fell down the mountain and that same you're kind of either tripping over
something or over your own feet and falling down a thing yes i love it it makes me think of when i go
skiing there's so much ski lingo skiers have their own lingo for everything and whenever you know
you're on a ski lift and people see someone who essentially they've fallen down on their skis but
literally everything has released your skis have released your hat's going you know your helmet
everything's going off they say yard sale right they yell yard sale and they make it even worse
for the poor person oh that's happened to me so many times one skis off in the powder and once
he's up the hill aways and then you're like trudging around trying to collect everything
yeah there's definitely a culture and skiers are not always yeah they're joking but they can give
people a hard time so the moral of the story is don't ski below the chair right right exactly
where anyone sees you from the chair lift exactly i love it so good okay okay so let's go over right
because in all of those cases you wouldn't say i fell over if you're tripping stumbling and falling
right we would not say i fell over this is very different this is referring to falling from a flat
surface it's not from a result of tripping yeah it doesn't even have to be a human right
you could say the tree fell over or the display fell over when i bumped it right right whereas
uh we wouldn't say that a tree or a display fell down because that's something that it would have
to be animated it would have to trip yes it fell over right right right and usually people right
i mean yeah and people don't really fall over again like we said it's more of an object
right yep exactly but here's the trick a person can fall over but there has to be some kind of
outside force causing that right you could say i fell over when she pushed me you wouldn't say
i fell down because you didn't trip on anything it's really this is when we use this as it's not
something i did i fell over either because maybe i lost my balance someone pushed me something
like that then would say i fell over yeah this is actually trickier than i thought when we started
the episode today this is pretty nuanced for our listeners right to understand the difference
right when i think about fall over i think about something that is just self-contained it's
sitting there on a flat surface like you said and then it just tips right and usually as you said a
result of something maybe the wind right causes it to fall over yeah yep somebody bumps it but
it is true we'll use this for humans as well so there are some expressions where we'll say
like i laughed so hard i fell over right and it's just like that expression where something was so
funny that maybe you really did kind of fall to the floor laughing holding your gut right but
this isn't because you tripped it's not because you stumbled right so there are some expressions
it's an exterior something exterior making you fall over yeah it's tricky though could you say
i laughed so hard i fell down i wouldn't because i i associate fell down with i stumbled i tried yeah
right yeah yeah i think i would only say that if like you're laughing so hard
and then you trip on something right right something that causes you to stumble right
yeah i love it okay or the leaning tower of pisa that's famous for that right right if you guys
have been to italy it's a little bit off the beaten path there isn't a train that goes there
so or maybe there was a train because i saw it so i must go i must have taken a train but it isn't
like right by rome you have to go out of your way right but it is this is something you could say
the leaning tower of pisa looks like it's going to fall over yeah for sure that's a perfect example
of fall over again just something that was upright and then it just it fell over right fall over it
looks like it's going to fall over and you would not say it looks like it's going to fall down
because it can't trip it can't stumble if you're going to say you feel like it's going to fall you
would say collapse for a building right oh my gosh so there's all these different nuanced meanings
but in general i think it helps to think of fall down for stumbling tripping you have to
trip over something stumble in order to say you fell down yeah i think that's probably the best
way to do you ever trip on cobblestones you know i mean when you go to like an old city and you're
kind of wandering around that sort of awkward surface you know absolutely uneven if they're
older montreal is really terrible for this i love montreal but the cobblestones are a lot in
a lot of places are very uneven you have to really watch where you're going it's hard to ride a bike
oh my gosh that's a good example montreal boston all these kind of older cities have
these whiny cobblestone roads very dangerous but so beautiful i love coming but so beautiful this
is great i mean like i said before aubry this is actually a little trickier than i than i thought
it would be but i i hope that we've explained the nuances i think we have for our listeners
really clearly here guys you know send us some follow-up questions if you're still confused
or if you have an extension question right aubrey yes i'd love to see some comments on our blog post
or on social media give some examples of sometime when you would use fall down or fall over we can
respond we can give you some feedback and make sure you're using them correctly yes and what's
a takeaway for our listeners today yeah just to be aware that there are subtle nuances between a
lot of phrasal verbs and a deep dive into two that are very similar like these that our student asked
about can really help you better understand how they're used by natives so that you can use them
correctly in conversation to sound more native and natural yeah i really think that going into
phrasal verbs is really getting closer to that 99 fluency level what do you think aubrey oh
definitely right if you're able to understand them and use them correctly you're there you're at that
99 fluency i love it so guys go over and check out alex's episode 1742 to get more phrasal verbs
fill up fill out we did those ones that was fun yeah good stuff good stuff awesome all
right aubry great stuff i'll see you on the next episode you have a good day you too bye-bye bye