Welcome to the A to Z English podcast.
My name is Jack, and today I am doing a solo episode.
I am one of the hosts of the podcast.
My partner, Sochil, is not here today.
And today I would like to talk about two phrasal verbs.
The first one is break down.
Break down.
And the second one is break up, break up.
And although these two sound like there's a relationship, like an opposite relationship between the two, they're not related.
The two meanings are very different.
Break down and break up.
So let's start with the meaning of breakdown.
Breakdown means to stop working or functioning properly, usually referring to mechanical or organizational failures.
So, for example, you could say, my car broke down on the highway.
And so what that means is you were driving your car, and suddenly the engine just started going, and the car broke down and stopped working, and you couldn't drive it anymore.
Another example, like an organizational failure example, would be negotiations between the two countries broke down.
So that means that, like, two countries were negotiating something and everything fell apart.
It stopped functioning, it stopped working properly, and each country decided to stop negotiating because the negotiations broke down.
So there's two examples for you.
Number two, break up.