Working from home

English says « from home » and stops there. German, when it names the place a piece of work is done from, likes to close the frame on both sides: von zu Hause aus. The von opens it, the aus at the end shuts it, and whatever stands in between is the base from which something reaches out — von hier aus, vom Küchentisch aus, von Leipzig aus. Grammars call such a pair a circumposition, and it keeps the case of its first half: von takes the dative, so it is vom Schreibtisch aus. In speech the aus is often dropped, and von zu Hause arbeiten is understood everywhere; in careful writing it is usually kept. The rest of the list follows the day the phrase describes: the rules that decide where one may work, the call one joins, the colleague one no longer bumps into, and the evening that has to be won back from the laptop.