Thank you for your educated empathy! I spent ten years in the US, have the highest proficiency level in the CEFR standard, and yet I dread phrasal verbs. Sure,

Thank you for your educated empathy! I spent ten years in the US, have the highest proficiency level in the CEFR standard, and yet I dread phrasal verbs. Sure, I get the feeling the set of idioms I know is getting smaller as time goes on, and spelling is, well, not foreign friendly, to put it mildly. But phrasal verbs... how can I really process that make out is somehow, intuitively, connected to kissing? What about putting out? How can a house burn up but also burn down? Putting off, setting somebody up, giving up? I will always feel more comfortable using postponing, framing and surrendering respectively. (I don't really use them more often to fit in [hey, that one almost makes sense!], but internally most phrasal verbs always feel artificial.) For the record, coming from Spanish I feel the pain of native English speakers having to cope with to be as both ser y estar, but to this day I still have some trouble with do and make.