Hi there,

Welcome back to The English Breakfast — the newsletter for Italian professionals who want to feel more confident in English at work.

The word “get“ is everywhere in natural English, but it can be frustrating because it changes meaning constantly. It’s one of the hardest-working verbs in the English language and mastering it is important if you want your speech to sound authentic, and if you want to understand native speakers easily.

So, let’s get started! (See what I did there? 😜 )

I know you love phrasal verbs so let’s start off with 6 essential examples that use “get“.

This is actually the most difficult use of “get“ because there’s no rule to remember, you just need to memorise each phrasal verb.

Can you get 6/6 correct?

Let’s find out.

Which sentence sounds more natural to you?

Option A - I arrived at the office and my boss told me I’d obtained a promotion.

Option B - I got to the office and my boss told me I’d got a promotion.

If you picked option B, you have great instincts!

Option A is grammatically perfect but it sounds like it was written by an 18th-century butler (=maggiordomo). In everyday, modern English we avoid heavy, formal verbs. Instead, we rely on our best friend: get

By replacing formal verbs with get, your English will instantly sound warmer, faster and more natural.

Here are the four biggest formal verbs you can completely replace today:

To see this verb in action, take a look at this quick dialogue between two colleagues, Alex and Sam.

Your challenge: Look at the uses of get in bold, and match them to the formal meanings:

a. Arrive b. Buy/Obtain c. Receive d. Understand.

📧 Reply to this email with your answers.

Now that you’re comfortable swapping formal words for get, let’s look at three unique ways native speakers use this verb to simplify sentences.

1. “To become”

When you want to describe a change in physical or emotional state, in English, we just use get + adjective.

Think of get here as a shortcut for "to become" or "to start to be."

Instead of searching for a specific verb, just look at how easy this is:

Quick tip: You’ll notice that a lot of reflexive verbs in Italian, prepararsi, annoiarsi, perdersi ecc. use get + adjective in English (get ready, get bored, get lost etc.)

2. Delegation

We often use phrases like “I need to get this contract signed” or “I’m getting my hair cut tomorrow“ to say that someone else will do something for us. We use get + the thing + past action word (past participle) to do this.

3. The "Persuasion" Twist

Want to say you convinced a specific person to do something? Just use get + person + to do something:

Now it’s your turn. Try translating these three common workplace scenarios using the get shortcuts we just covered.

Hit Reply to this email, send me your three sentences and I’ll tell you if you got them right.

Do you know how to pronounce the words worked, played and printed correctly? Are you sure?

Watch this week’s Quick Fix to find out if you’re accidentally making this common pronunciation mistake.

This will help you with the sentences with get that use a past participle too!

➡ Click here to improve your pronunciation and listening skills today.

All right, that’s it for this week’s edition.

Have a great week.

All the best,

Dan

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