Keep up with

Keep up with

Today’s phrasal verb is to “keep up with.” When you keep up with something, you move at the same speed . If you and a friend both go out for a run , you may not both be at the same level. One person might have a hard time keeping up with the other. When that happens, one person can run faster, and the other struggles to run at the same speed. The other friend struggles to keep up.

In fact, “keep up with” is the basis for a famous English expression called “to keep up with the Joneses.” To keep up with the Joneses is to try to spend money on things—stuff—just to show off that you have as much money as other people. It’s a bad cycle to get in—trying to keep up with the Joneses. It means you’re trying to have a modern car, the latest electronics, God forbid you don’t have the latest iPhone, new clothes for every season . That’s trying to keep up with the Joneses. Trying to go at the same speed—to always be getting new stuff, just like “everyone else” (quote-unquote).

So you know the basis for the way I used it earlier. In our fictional restaurant, it was hard for us to keep up with the volume of delivery orders in our small restaurant kitchen. It was hard for us to go at the same speed: orders were coming in faster than we could fill them . We were not going at the same speed; we could not keep up with the pace of delivery orders in our fictional restaurant.

I’ve heard from some of you that it’s hard to keep up with this program, since we have two episodes every week. And to that I say—don’t worry. The episodes will always be here. There are times when it’s hard to keep up, but you can do what Heidi does and catch up on all the old episodes when you go on vacation!

And hey, if you think it’s hard to keep up as a listener, try keeping up with a production schedule twice a week!

There are a few other ways to use “keep up” and “keep up with”, but I haven’t explained them here—perhaps in a future episode—but just so you know, there are multiple ways of using this phrasal verb.

JR’s song of the week

Today’s song of the week is “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens. It was used as the intro music to the Netflix series “The Politician,” which JR really likes. I, of course, had never heard of it until he told me about it. And this is also a good illustration of the 30-second rule we were talking about a few episodes back— no wasting time , we know what the song is like within the first 30 seconds. “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens, the intro to the series “The Politician” is this week’s song.

Thanks again for joining us. I sometimes like to drop hints about the next episode topic. But in this case, I have no idea what it’s going to be. We are just going to have to find out together. But whatever it is, it will be coming out on Monday, like always, 6:00 am Chicago time. See you then.

By the way, if you can understand this program, then you might be ready to speed things up a little, with Plain English Plus+. As a member of Plain English Plus+, you can listen to a fast version of this very program. A lot of members listen to both—they listen to the slow version first to understand the topic; then they listen to the fast version to see how it sounds at full speed. I know some of you speed up this program on your podcast player, but if you’re really serious about improving your listening, there’s no substitute for the full-speed version. And of course, you have the transcript available—and the Plus+ transcripts include our instant translations into seven languages. So what are you waiting for? If you’d like to speed things up, come join us at PlainEnglish.com/Plus.