3 (More) Uses of "Get" - EnglishClass101

Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha. In this lesson, I’m going to talk about 3 uses of “get.” I made a previous video about the word “get” that covered three different uses of this verb, so you can take a look at that video for some other ways that you can use this word.

Let’s get started with this lesson with the next group of meanings, okay.

The first use of “get” that I want to talk about in this lesson is “arrive.”

So, we can use the word “get” to mean “arrive.” Arrive tends to sound a little bit formal or a little bit more polite, so we use “get” a lot in everyday conversation.

So, some key points about this use.

We use with “to” before the location, so “get to + [the location].”

However, there is an exception, there is one situation where we don’t follow this rule. We do not use this with “get home,” so that means we don’t say “get to home.” We always say “get home,” okay?

So, we use this to mean “arrive” and this sounds much more natural in everyday conversation than arrive, so try to use this “get” pattern when you’re talking about reaching your destination.

Let’s look at some examples, okay.

First is “I’m going to get to the office at about 5 PM.”

“I’m going to get to the office at around 5 PM.”

So, this “get to” means “arrive.” So, “I’m going to arrive at the office at about 5 PM.”

So, we can replace “get to” with “arrive at” and it stays the same, the meaning stays the same. So, again, the difference here is just that “get to” sounds much, much more casual, much more common in everyday conversation. It’s 100% correct to say “I’m going to arrive at the office at about 5 PM,” but it just sounds a little more polite. So, I recommend this pattern for everyday use.

Okay, let’s look at the next example.

“We didn’t get home until midnight.”

So here, we’re using this “get home” pattern. I talked about we use this “get home” as an exception, so no “to” here. Not “We didn’t get to home until midnight,” but “We didn’t get home until midnight.”

So, we have this negative sentence pattern. That means not- it doesn’t mean that we didn’t get home at all. It means we were not able to reach home or we did not arrive at our home until this point in time, until midnight. So, “We didn’t get home until midnight.”

Again, we could use the verb “arrive” in this sentence.

“We didn’t arrive at home until midnight.”

So, we can use that, yes, but this sounds much more natural for everyday conversation.

Okay, onto our next example.

“I’m gonna get there in a few minutes.”

Okay, let’s take a look at this sentence. There’s one part in this sentence I want to focus on. It’s this “there.” So, “I’m gonna (I’m going to) get there in a few minutes.” So you might notice that I’ve used “there” here and no “to,” right? So, remember, when we use the word “there,” we’re not talking about a specific location, like the office or some country, certain country or certain city or something like that. “There” is kind of a general word we understand from the context, right?

So, when we talk about traveling to a place and we use the word “there,” we don’t use the preposition “to.” For example, a common mistake that I see among learners is “I have been to there.” This is incorrect. We say, “I have been there.”

The same rule applies here with “get.” So, “I’m gonna get there in a few minutes” is correct. We cannot say, “I’m gonna get to there.” We use “to” before the specific destination. “There” is a word that we use in our context. We use it and we understand the meaning from the context. It doesn’t refer to a specific place, so we don’t use the preposition “to” in this case, either. So, “I’m gonna get there in a few minutes.”

Again, we could use “arrive” in this sentence too.

“I’m gonna arrive in a few minutes” is also okay. So, you can choose which one you prefer. I would definitely recommend “get there.” I’m gonna get there in a few minutes.”

Okay, last one for this meaning, past tense here.

“He got to his hotel in the evening.”

So this means he arrived at his hotel in the evening. So, he got to his hotel in the evening, in this case, we have our preposition “to” and we have “his hotel,” this is our specific location in this case. So, past tense, “He got to this hotel in the evening.”

I mentioned earlier using “at” or I’m sorry, I mentioned earlier using “arrive” here. So we could use “arrive.” “He arrived at his hotel.” Note the preposition is different. “He arrived at his hotel” or “He got to his hotel,” so make sure you don’t mix up those prepositions, okay?

So, this is the first use of “get” for this lesson. We could use “get” to mean “arrive.”

Okay, let’s take a look at the second use for this lesson. The second use is “understand.” So we use “get” a lot to mean “to understand” or “to comprehend (something),” okay?

So, first point, this is much more casual than understand. When we use “get” to mean understand, it’s much more casual. It’s much more common in everyday communication. So, this is the one that’s going to make you sound much more natural. If you’re talking to someone about something new you’re learning, instead of saying “I understand,” use one of these expressions, like “I get (something),” okay?

So, let’s take a look at some common expressions that use this form of “get.”

The first one is a negative one. Very, very good to know this sentence. It’s very useful.

It is “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t get it.”

This means “I don’t understand it,” I don’t understand it. So, “it” is the situation or the topic at the moment. “I don’t get it.” So, this is a very quick, very easy way to say I don’t understand and it sounds more casual. Using “I don’t understand” tends to sound a little bit too formal when you’re talking with your friends, but this one sounds very, very natural.

So, when you’re confused about something or everyone is laughing and you don’t know why, you can say “I don’t get it,” I don’t get it. So that means I don’t understand. So please explain something to me. This is a great sentence to know.

Okay, the next one:

“Do you get what I mean?”

So, this is something, a question, someone can use to clarify, to check the other person’s understanding. So, here, “get,” again, means “understand.” Do you understand what I mean? Do you understand what I am trying to say? So, you’re checking the other person’s understanding.

Of course, using understand here, again, is okay to use, but this sounds much more friendly. So, if, for example, you’re teaching your co-worker how to do something new and you want to check and make sure they’re okay, you can say “Do you get what I mean?” or “Do you get it?” as well. You can use this part here, just “Do you get it?” to check their understanding. So this is another good one to use.

This “Do you get what I mean?” So this “...what I mean” refers to my intentions. Do you understand the thing I’m trying to say? Do you understand the point I’m trying to make? Do you get what I mean? That’s what it sounds like at native speed. “Do you get what I mean?” So it sounds very, very fast. “Do you get what I mean?” becomes “Do you get what I mean?”

Okay, let’s go to our next one. The next one, another good one when you’re learning how to do something or teaching someone how to do something.

“Don’t worry if you don’t get it right away.”

So, I can use this in a lesson, for example.

“Don’t worry if you don’t get it right away.”

So this means, if you don’t understand the information immediately, right away, right now, that’s okay. So, don’t worry. This is like saying it’s okay to take some time to practice, right? It’s okay to learn new information, to study the information a few times and then be able to use it. So, don’t worry if you don’t understand right away is what this means, but we use this “get it.” It’s much more efficient and it sounds much more friendly. So, don’t worry if you don’t get it right away. So, this is a very, very common expression that you can use when you’re teaching someone else how to do something.

Okay, let’s look at another example. The next one is super, super common.

“I get it!”

I get it!”

You can use this when you learn something new, when you understand a joke, when you just kind of realize somethingm, finally, after struggling for some time. And a lot of the time, people will make this “I” sound very long like “I… get it!” “I… get it!”

So, you’ll use this one, “I get it!” interestingly in this kind of present tense, yeah, I get it, means “I understand.” You might hear people say, “Yeah, I got it” to confirm something after something has been taught. So, for example, if someone teaches you how to do something and they say - Are you okay? Do you understand? You might say, “Yeah, yeah, I got it. I got it.” Which means I’m okay, I have it, it’s okay for me.

So, you might hear this used in past tense as well, but we often, in that moment, when we understand, use this in present tense or the infinitive verb form here.

“I get it!”

“Oh, I get it now” means I understand now.

So, this is a really, really good one to use. It’s a quick, short phrase that expresses you understand something. “Oh, I get it!” You can use it with a joke too. “I get it.” So that means I understood your joke, right?

Okay, let’s look at the last one. I just used this expression.

“He didn’t get the joke.”

This means he didn’t understand the joke. So, we use this verb a lot when we’re talking about jokes and humor. So when someone understands a joke, we say “He got the joke.” He understood the joke. When someone doesn’t understand the joke, we use an expression like this, “He didn’t get the joke” or in my case, I could say, “I didn’t get the joke.” So, I didn’t understand the joke or he didn’t understand the joke, we use this verb a lot when we’re talking about humor and jokes and these kinds of funny things. So, if you want to express that someone didn’t understand the joke, you can use this. “Ugh, he didn’t get the joke.” So, you can use this one to talk about these humorous situations, okay.

So, this is how we use the verb “get” to mean “understand.” Again, this “I don’t get it” and “Uh, I get it!” are super, super helpful and very, very common expressions that you can use to express your understanding or, of course, when you don’t understand something.

Okay, great! So, let’s talk now about the last meaning for this lesson. No.3 is “have an opportunity.” So we use the verb “get” to refer to our opportunities, our life and professional opportunities. So, we use this one to express a positive or an exciting experience. So, when we use “get” in this way, we’re talking about something we’re really excited about or something good or something that maybe is a good chance for us. So, we’re usually communicating something happy or something positive when we use this “get.”

Second, we use this with “to” plus the infinitive form of the verb, so “to” plus the base form of the verb. So let’s see some examples here, okay?

So, let’s take a look at our first example.

(Past tense) “I got to ride in a helicopter last weekend!”

“I got to ride in a helicopter last weekend!”

So, this “got” right here, past tense “get,” I got to… in this case, “ride” is my infinitive verb, so to ride. I have the infinitive form, following get. In this case, “got.” So, “I got to ride in a helicopter last weekend.” This use of get expresses an exciting opportunity, some kind of positive or fun experience. “I got to ride in a helicopter last weekend.:

So, you may think, well, what’s the difference between “I rode in a helicopter last weekend” and “I got to ride in a helicopter last weekend”? When we include this “got to,” I got to ride in a helicopter last weekend, it sounds like we got the privilege or we got the exciting opportunity to ride in a helicopter this weekend or last weekend, sorry. So, when you say “I rode in a helicopter last weekend,” it sounds like a basic report. Maybe your voice is really excited and you say “I rode in a helicopter last weekend!” That’s fine.

If you really want to communicate that exciting opportunity feeling, you can use the verb “get.” So in this case, “I got to ride in a helicopter last weekend.” This shows that you’re excited about what happened.

Okay, let’s look at another example.

“We get to go on a free vacation!”

So in this case, you’ve received a free vacation. That’s super exciting, right? So, if you want to express this to your friend, you can say “We get to go…” So here is my infinitive. “We get to go on a free vacation.” So, again, this use of “get” is like saying we get the opportunity, we get the exciting opportunity to go on a free vacation. So this communicate that excited feeling, that feeling of good opportunity somehow.

“We get to go on a free vacation!”

Okay.

Let’s look at one more example, a question in this case.

“Did you get to talk to any celebrities at the VIP party?”

So, celebrity means a famous person. “Did you get to talk to…” So, “get to talk to,” the prepositions are two TOs in this sentence, okay. “Did you get to talk to any celebritie at the VIP party?” So again, this is asking a question about someone’s potential exciting opportunity. So, it’s like saying did you get the chance or did you get the opportunity to do this exciting thing? Did you meet any famous people? Did you talk to any famous people? So, “Did you get to…” Again, including this “get to” makes it sound more like that’s kind of an exciting opportunity, an exciting chance in some way.

So, you could say, “Did you talk to any celebrities at the VIP party?” That’s 100% correct, but if you include, “Did you get to talk to anybody?” it sounds like you had some kind of cool chance to do something.

So, this is a very small point, yes, but it communicates that feeling of excitement. So, when you’re reading and when you’re hearing about people’s good news, listen for this “get” or “got” in past tense because that shows a little bit extra, right? It shows that they’re excited or they feel really, really positive about that experience, okay?

Great! So, those are three different uses of the verb “get.” So, we talked about how to use it to mean arrive along with the preposition “to” before a specific location. We talked about using “get” to mean understand, and we also talked about using “get” to express an exciting opportunity.

So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this video, there are, of course, many other uses of the verb “get,” and I have another video all about this verb, about three more uses of this video. So, if you want to get some more practice with some different uses, please make sure to have a look at that too.

Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon. Bye!

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