this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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"Starting a game over" is an interesting phrase. I know exactly what it means, but the words themselves are nonsense.
I don't have a problem with the phrase, but "restarting a game" would probably be a better choice.
Oh, yeah. Language is just fun to observe because its easy to not notice.
I understood it to mean "the end of something", though I guess "repeating the game" might be more concrete. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's poetry.
I think you're getting stuck on the "game over" part. This by itself does mean "the end of something" But "start over" is a separable phrasal verb that means "to begin again". So you can say "Let's start over" or "Let's start the game over".
I always felt a little bad for ESL students who just discovered phrasal verbs because they're basically a whole new set of often nonsensical verbs to learn.
If you go by what my high school teachers taught me, grammatically the phrase should 'technically' be "start over the game," but nobody speaks like that.
I say this because there are plenty of grammar "rules" that nobody follows that are still taught in schools. I don't know if ESL students learn them too, but if they do it's gotta be hella confusing
I think it's an obligatorily separated phrasal verb. This page has some examples of others like it https://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2013/04/phrasal-verbs-that-are-always-separated.html?m=1
Cool, thanks! I was taught the complete opposite, this is a much better reflection of how the language is actually used, and that's what matters :)