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Many times it's the other way around. Obviate has several cognates in romance languages, so it is straightforward. Now, the phrasal verbs that are so obvious
by Shorel 4y ago
Many times it's the other way around.
Obviate has several cognates in romance languages, so it is straightforward.
Now, the phrasal verbs that are so obvious to a native speaker, these are the real head-scratchers.
Or street slang. It may sound like dumbing it down to you, but it actually adds complexity for a non-native.
- Al-Khwarizmi 4y agoIndeed. "Register": I immediately know what it means and it takes tenths of a second for me to make the decision to click (or not to). "Sign up": despite having a CEFR C2 level of English and using it at work every day, I still need to think for a few seconds if this is a registration or a login (cf. "sign in"). For a native speaker I suppose the latter is (marginally?) easier, but for a non-native, it's much harder, not even close.
- jsjohnst 4y agoYour examples are very illustrative, but I would argue that both phrases suffer from being too generic. I wish that there wasn’t such a push for “one word” CTAs. Examples of alternatives I’d advocate for depending on context: “Create an account” “Subscribe to mailing list” “Submit contest entry”