Station, airport, border

Thirty-sixth on this list is prendere un volo, and its verb is one an English reader must unlearn a habit for. Italian boards everything with prendere: prendere il treno, prendere l’aereo, prendere un taxi. One verb, and it carries no extra information at all — it says nothing about whether you were early, late or running. English splits the same act across three, and the choice is never free. « Take » is the neutral one and the exact match: « take the 7.40 », « take a flight to Milan ». « Catch » adds the idea of not missing it, so « I caught the last train » quietly reports a near thing, and « I catch the bus every morning » makes a routine sound like a small daily victory. « Get » is the spoken one, ordinary and brisk: « get the bus », « get a taxi ». « Board » names only the stepping on, which is why it lives on signs, not in conversation. Prendere covers all four, so the work for an English speaker is not learning a word but deciding, every time, how much to say.