Learn 30 phrasal verbs in 30 days!

Jumpstart your vocabulary in 2017.

Today is Day 22 and we're studying phrasal verbs with “polish”.

Polish. I like these phrasal verbs.

We just have to polish up, and polish off, but they are useful.

You will notice them in conversations.

Polish off. This means to finish something.

We use it a lot with food and drink.

There’s only a little wine left in the bottle. Who will polish it off?

Or, I tried not to, but I polished off the cake.

It can also mean to kill somebody.

This use is much less frequent.

She wanted her boyfriend to polish off her ex husband.

Polish up. It means to change things, to improve things, in order to help the image of something.

I’m going to polish up my sales pitch before I send my next emails.

It can also mean to work on something to improve it, to practice.

I really need to polish up this piano piece before the recital.

Or, I need to polish up my Spanish before my trip to Peru.

Will you polish up your phrasal verb vocabulary?

Keep working on the videos in this 30-day challenge!

Polish is a two-syllable word with stress on the first syllable.

POL-ish. Polish.

It begins with the P consonant,

so the lips come together and then release with a little burst of air into the AH as in Father vowel.

Poh- poh- ah-

The tongue presses down a little bit. Then we have an L.

t’s at the end of a syllable, so it’s a dark L, but I actually think this works better as a Light L.

Tongue tip up to the roof of the mouth, pol- pol-

Or you can put your tongue so the tip is touching the back of the teeth,

or even pressing up on the bottom of the top teeth.

Uhll—pollll—polish, poll--

There, you see a little bit of the tongue.

Then the second syllable, unstressed.

A quick IH vowel and the SH consonant, -ish, -ish, -ish, -ish.

Make that very quickly. Simplify everything.

You don’t need to flare your lips like you would for the SH sound at the beginning of a stressed syllable,

Shh---

Sh. -ish, -ish, -ish, -ish.

More simple, less movement.

Polish, polish.

We do this because it’s an unstressed syllable

and simplifying the movements allow us to make that syllable even shorter.

We want this so there’s contrast with the longer, up-down shape, the stressed syllable.

POL-ish. POL-ish.

Polish, polish.

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This 30-day challenge is leading up to a phrasal verbs course

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