AEE 2636: Don’t Forget About Grammar! Transitive vs. Intransitive Verbs

This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2636. Don't forget about grammar, transitive versus intransitive verbs. Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English?

We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection. With your American hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl. coming to you from Colorado and New York City, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

How do you know if a verb is transitive or intransitive? And more importantly, how can this affect connection? Learn all of this and more today. Most English learners are solving the wrong problem.

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Join the early interest list now. Go to allersenglish.com slash vocabulary and get on the list today. Hey, Aubrey. How's it going today? I am great, Lindsay.

How are you? Good, but I have a question. Are you forgetful? Are you a forgetful person, would you say? I didn't used to be, but more and more I am. I'm not sure I've got some brain fog going on.

The other day, this was funny. So I was out of town. I was in Sea Island, Georgia, which is... beautiful area of the South, right on the coast, just South of Savannah.

And they had a spa there at this resort. And I was already, I was planning to go to the pools or the hot tub and do like the steam room, the sauna. And I got all packed, everything. And it was sort of far.

The grounds were quite expansive and I had to walk at least a half a mile to get to where I was going. Got all ready, got my locker, everything's ready. I realized I hadn't brought a swimsuit.

I had forgotten to pack a swimsuit. And this is all public. Everything's public. So it's not, you know, you definitely would need, I would need a swimsuit for all of this.

So I just had to pack it back up, go back to the room, get a swimsuit, walk back. So frustrating. You just need to have a sense of humor about these things, I think, right? Because it's going to happen.

What are you going to do? Oh, no. I'm sorry to hear that. Well, at least you were on vacation, so you had the time maybe a little extra time to do it.

That's true. Thank goodness. But it does have – often I'm forgetful when I don't have the time and things are – there are higher stakes and it can be extremely frustrating. Totally.

I took my dog out this morning and I put his gentle leader on his – it's not a muzzle. It looks like a muzzle so people get confused, but it keeps him from pulling. It's just this thing that goes around his nose. That's why I can pull him back easy.

But then I forgot to put his collar on. So if he ever got off, he needs a collar so people know his name and that kind of thing. Right. You do not want to lose a pet without their collar.

Oh my gosh. No. Yeah. So we all do this. I think our listeners are going to resonate right away. They'll have their own stories. And this leads us into a great question for today from Kaio, one of our longtime students, right?

Yes. She noticed something interesting about how we use the word forget. Yeah. Do you want to read the question for us, Lindsay? All right. Hello, Aubrey and Lindsay.

I was actually listening to the Allers English podcast for nearly two hours on my commute the other day. Awesome. It's amazing. I really appreciate you creating such awesome podcasts and it makes my day.

Learning English as well as learning American history has been such an incredible experience for me. Well, thank you, Kayo. And we appreciate you as well as a member of our community. I know, right?

Shout out to Kayo. She is awesome. And this is a great question. So I'm a curious mind and it'd be fantastic if you could explain some of the transitive verbs.

I recently learned that the verb discuss is not followed by about. So I looked up other transitive verbs and the verb forget was one that caught my attention as I frequently hear forget about it, or I forgot about it. It might be an idiomatic expression, but this is the only exception of Yeah.

And so on. All right. Good question, Kaio. Yeah. And I love that shout out back to that episode. I thought that was really interesting. I learned a lot as well about American culture.

And I love this that students recognize this. It's not just about the language. It's also interesting cultural pieces. There's so much to learn. And I love that we are able to share all of that and that Kaio and listeners out there appreciate it.

Exactly. Exactly. And I love that Kayo is just observing and taking in the language and then asking good questions. So guys, if you have a good question, send it in to support at allersenglish.com.

We want to feature your question on the show, especially if it's very specific like this one. Exactly. And this is such a great observation. Kaio is spot on.

Discuss is not followed by about, but forget can be. So why is that, Lindsay? Oh my gosh. Well, it's not an idiomatic expression, Aubrey. It's a grammar rule.

Let's talk about it a little bit. Yes. It all comes down to whether a verb is transitive, intransitive, or can be both. So we're going to break down each type of verb so that you can understand and use them correctly.

And we'll discuss words like forget that can actually be both depending on how they're used in a sentence. Okay, looking forward. This will be a heavy hitting grammar episode today. So we're looking forward to getting into it.

But first, guys, go ahead and hit follow on the podcast. Or if you are a more of a YouTube person, you could be watching us on YouTube, hit subscribe on our channel. Yes, absolutely. All right, let's dive in.

So first, transitive verbs like discuss, right? These follow a pattern. It is a verb plus a direct object. So for example, let's discuss the movie. So discuss is our verb.

The movie is the direct object. What should we discuss? Let's discuss what? The movie. Right. Or another example, right now we're discussing a grammar rule.

So your verb is discussing and the direct object there is grammar rule, right? Exactly. But there are intransitive verbs like talk, for example. These verbs cannot be followed by a direct object.

So for example, she talked. When you just mean she spoke, she's speaking, she talked, there's no direct object. Nothing else coming. Yeah, exactly. Or they talked all night.

Right. Right. Or we talked for hours. Yeah. Exactly. But we can use about with both transitive and intransitive verbs, but in very different ways. What about with transitive verbs, Lindsay?

Yeah. About here in this case is used before the direct object when it talks about the amount. So for example, it kind of means approximately, right? Exactly.

She spent about $50. Right. Right, exactly. Or he invited about 10 people to dinner. So this is a very specific use of this where it means approximately.

That's why this word is so confusing. It can mean something different depending on where it is in the sentence. What about when about introduces a topic? So for example, what do you think about the song?

Or let's talk about it. Here, it's intransitive, right? We're using about to introduce that direct object. Yes. Do you ever avoid speaking because you're worried that you'll make a mistake?

Not a huge mistake, but just enough of a mistake to make the conversation feel awkward. So instead, you choose the simpler path, the safer answer, maybe the shorter answer. Over time, this habit becomes a barrier to fluency and connection. Because fluency isn't about avoiding mistakes.

It's about communicating and connecting despite them. Our free two-minute fluency quiz helps you discover your current English level and it identifies what's holding you back. Go to allearsenglish.com slash fluency score to take the free two-minute quiz now. That's allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e.

All right. All right. So things are going to get even more interesting from here. Is that right, Aubrey? Yes. Because some verbs can be both transitive and intransitive, depending on how you use them.

We call this ambitransitive, like ambidextrous, ambitransitive. It's a mouthful. It's a really good term. I love it. So let's give some examples of ambitransitive words.

Yeah. Yeah. So forget, forgot. I forgot my keys. It's transitive there. I completely forgot is then intransitive, right? Exactly. Or I forgot about that night, intransitive.

Or lose would be another ambitransitive. I lost what? I lost my keys. That makes it transitive. Okay. Exactly. Or I lost about $200 gambling last night.

Transitive, again, what did you lose? About $200. Okay. There's clearly something that was lost, right? So that's transitive. And then intransitive, I'm super competitive.

I just can't lose. Okay. And so we're not saying what you lost. I'm saying I can't lose, period, full stop. Here it's used intransitively. Okay. Give us another example, Aubrey.

Remember is another example. I remember her name, transitive. And also I remembered about half the words on the test. Here it's also transitive. And then an intransitive example, I just can't remember.

There's no direct object there, right? We're just sort of saying in general, I can't remember. I mean, we might know what we're talking about, but we're just stopping the sentence there. So it's not clear.

Exactly. The direct object can be implied, but if it's not stated like this, it's still transitive. It's still rather intransitive. What about no? Is that another one?

Yes. So for example, do you know Spanish is transitive. We have a direct object there. What do you know? Oh, I know Spanish. But so many times in daily life, we just say, I don't know.

I feel like I say it a thousand times a day. I don't know. Or I know about the scandal, right? These are intransitive. Okay. All right. Let's put these all into a role play for our listeners here and let's see what it looks like.

So Aubrey, you and I are at a party and there's a woman approaching us to chat. Okay. Uh-oh. That woman is walking over here. Who is she? I know her, but I forgot her name.

Same. I remember her face, but I don't know where we met. Do we know her from the concert? Wow. I completely forgot about that concert, but I don't know if she was there.

This is bad. I've totally lost it. Don't worry. It happens. If she asks, just say, sorry, I forgot. That reminds me of the scene in Devil Wears Prada where, remember, she had to memorize the names of all the politicians and donors.

Yes. And she has them all memorized. She just whispers them to Meryl Streep. And then she freezes. She forgets one. The guy's walking towards her. Just reminds me of that scene.

Yeah. Exactly. But let's go through these. We used a bunch here in this role play. So first the transitive verbs. Remember these take an object. So first we have no, I know her.

And then forgot, I forgot her name. These are transitive. We have that direct object there. And again, I remember her face. So we have a direct object there too, right?

So transitive. What else? And then no, do we know her? Forgot. Again, I completely forgot about that concert. No, I don't know if she was there. And then lost.

I've totally lost it. These are all transitive because there is a stated direct object. But then the last one, we don't really have a stated direct object, right? We said, sorry, I forgot, right?

So that's intransitive, same verb used in a different way. It's intransitive when there's no direct object. Okay. What else do we need to know here, Aubrey?

Anything else? So this is interesting. When it comes to this type of grammar, it's very easy to let it keep you from connecting, right? If you are so worried about using the correct verb and is there a direct object, you can see how that could really stunt your progress.

It could keep you from joining the conversation at all. So this is the kind of thing that it will sound right, whether you should have a direct object or not, as you are taking in and being observant of language.

Whether a verb is transitive or intransitive, it's going to just fit correctly in what you're saying. Yeah. As long as you're continuing those connection moments, right? You're having more conversations.

If you freeze up and decide, well, I don't know if it's transitive, intransitive, so I'm just not going to have the conversation, then you will not continue the learning that you need to build that intuition. Absolutely. I think Kaya was a great example of that. She had this question, but we have both observed how much she is connecting in English, diving in with the language.

She's not letting these doubts, these questions, things she doesn't quite totally understand, keep her from connecting in English. And that is the goal. Like, yes, it's interesting to know this grammar, to know why, why do we have these verbs in there? They seem to be used differently.

And it's one thing to let that keep you from connecting in English. So what we're looking for is that positive snowball effect where we're open to connection, we're getting into conversations, that's leading to better questions that we can ask native speakers or teachers. Then we can then learn the lesson, observe it in the next connection moment, right? Absolutely.

Absolutely. Right. And yes, you do want to be doing this correctly. These are glaring errors that sound really off to native speakers. If you include a direct object when you shouldn't or vice versa, but it will come as you are taking in English, being observant in English, having those conversations because it will sound right, right?

As you understand and listen and different chunks, everything sounds correct. Yep. That's the philosophy we keep here at Allers English. And if you guys agree, be sure to hit the follow button on the show and go check out an older episode, not too old, just a few episodes back, 2566.

Learn roughly five new ways to stay broad in English. All right. Amazing. Awesome. Thank you again, Kaio, for the question. So interesting to dive into this grammar.

And now that you have this very clear explanation of transitive and intransitive verbs, you know more than the average native English speaker that if you ask them, what's the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb, they're going to say, a what now?

Most of them will not know what you're talking about. Oh, and that just gave me a great episode idea. Why did they say now after that? Why would they say now?

But that's another episode for another day. Love that. All right, guys. We are off the mic for today. Aubrey, I'll see you back here soon. Awesome. See you guys next time.

Bye. Thanks for listening to All Ears English. Would you like to know your English level? Take our two minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com forward slash fluency score.

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