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"Take On Me" is a song by the Norwegian band A-ha, from their album Hunting High and Low released in 1985, and the lyrics (and title) has been bothering me for the past thirty years or so. The chorus goes something like this:

Take on me (take on me)
Take me on (take on me)
I'll be gone
In a day or two

Now, the phrase "Take on me" sounds very much like a Scandinavianism for lack of a better word. (I don't speak Norwegian but I do speak Swedish. Meh. Close enough.) In Swedish you can translate this word for word:

Take - Ta (or: Tag)
On - På
Me - Mig

What you end up with is "Ta på mig", which means touch me. It looks as if they just translated the Norwegian equivalent of touch me, word for word, and ended up with take on me. This would make sense, thematically.

But does it actually mean anything in English?

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pipe
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    I’ve always wondered the same thing. Take on me doesn’t mean anything to me in English and intuitively feels very much like a Scandinavianism (that is the right word, by the way). Pretty sure a more accurate translation would be ‘feel me up’: ta på [noen] refers to lecherously groping someone, rather than just touching them in any old way. I’ve also always wondered what this would imply for take me on. If that’s a Scandinavianism too, then I’m lost, because ta mig på in Norwegian means ‘put me on [like a coat]’. So grope me and then put me on like a coat? – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 22 '17 at 10:05
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    Please include the research you’ve done. Questions that can be answered using commonly-available references are off-topic. Checking for the multi-word verb 'take on' in a dictionary would be a start. / It is possible that conversational deletion is involved (Here's a take on me ...'. But this is also too broad for ELU, and POB as well. Song lyric interpretations are actually explicitly off-topic as they often use far from standard usages. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 22 '17 at 10:57
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    "Take me on" means challenge me, compete with me in some kind of adversarial situation. (He's pretty good ar chess, but he doesn't show any interest in taking me on.) But this is a verb + preposition combo that isn't movable; "take on me" is nonsense in standard English. – Steven Littman Oct 22 '17 at 11:26
  • @EdwinAshworth My question is specifically about the form "Take on me" which I think sounds wrong. Not other usages, for example "Take on a project". – pipe Oct 22 '17 at 11:51
  • So why all the unnecessary background? << Is 'Take on me' (which appears in the song X by Y) correct English? >> // The fact is that ELU requires a certain level of reasonable research. 'Take on' could be looked up (decent modern dictionaries include what they call 'phrasal verbs') ('take on' = tackle; adopt; employ ...). And pronoun/noun placement in 'take on' + 'me' / 'take on' + 'the task' has been covered. // As to the exact meaning of the string in the song? As I explain, song lyrics, being a law unto themselves, do not fit in here. It's guesswork unless you contact the writers. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 22 '17 at 12:06
  • Commercial lyrics do not necessarily have to convey any constructed meaning across the lyric. Much of commercialised music is based on alliteration rather than truly skilled prosody. – Nigel J Oct 22 '17 at 15:04
  • @Edwin I agree that a dictionary lookup should be included in the question, but I disagree that commonly available resources would be able to answer the question. It is implicit in the question that the particle verb take on, which is the only one specifically included in the GR dictionaries I’ve checked, is not questioned. This has nothing to do with not knowing how to place pronouns in phrasal verbs, nor about interpretation of song lyrics; it is asking whether, despite dictionaries not including it, there is a preposition verb take on in English. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 22 '17 at 17:02
  • Take on me is not idiomatic, but I fail to see why it might me considered ungrammatical or nonsense. – Davo Oct 22 '17 at 20:46
  • @Janus Macmillan // Collins // CED // AHD {they list after the simplex verb}{& there are two additional multi-listings}. General reference. // Valid English? 'Take on me'? Of course the lack of grammaticality is important. // 'Does it actually mean anything in English?' Who knows what it means? Hot Licks' answer below is both genref and admitted to be POB. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 22 '17 at 22:23
  • @Edwin Out of those, only Macmillan lists a preposition verb at all, and it does so incorrectly (take on a new look is particular, not prepositional). None of the others list the phrasal verb being asked about here. From that, one might conclude that there is no such phrasal verb in English, which would be a perfectly valid answer (preferably backed up by more evidence if such can be found). It may also be the case that there is actually such a phrasal verb that just hasn’t been included in standard dictionaries; references to its existence would make an excellent answer. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 22 '17 at 22:29
  • It's a slight broadening of Collins' and AHD's first sense. A larger broadening of American Heritage® Roget's Thesaurus's sense 1. Wordnet has '4. take on – admit into a group or community'. Hot Licks @Janus says that there are different possible interpretations. With the lack of grammaticality and the following two lines, it becomes even harder to know what is intended by the writer/s. // The song setting should be stripped out, the normal ordering given ('What can "Take me on", which I've come across in a song, mean? ...') and reasonable research shown. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 22 '17 at 22:44
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    @Edwin That would completely negate the question. The question is specifically about take on me, with that precise word order, and explicitly NOT about take me on with that word order. Take me on is irrelevant to the question, except as a different structure known to be grammatical. The question is essentially: “There is no doubt that take me on is grammatical and has (several) meaning(s). In addition to that, this song also uses the different verb take on me, which is not listed in dictionaries; is that also a grammatically and meaningful verb, or does it not exist in English?” – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 22 '17 at 22:49
  • @Janus Very few MWVs accept a pronoun after rather than before a transitivising particle. I've come across no examples of 'take on me' in any dictionary or the Oxford Book of Phrasal Verbs. I'm 99+% sure that it's a liberty taken for the correct 'take me on', also used in the song. // The lack of examples given where the object is a person (other than with say the 'employ' and 'challenge' senses) with 'take on sb' / 'take sb on' seems reasonable proof that 'take on John' for 'assume responsibility for John' is rare. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 22 '17 at 22:55
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    This filtered Google data for "take on him" after eliminating false positives for 'my take on him' / 'a take on him' etc just leaves two false positives I didn't preclude. That would seem proof enough that standalone 'take on me' is non-standard. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 22 '17 at 23:00
  • @Edwin I mostly agree. I am not aware of any such verb either, and I too am 99+% certain that it doesn’t exist. If we can dispel that last <1%, then that’s an answer. In fact, I’d say your filtered Google search (along with your previous comment) would make a good answer. That seems about as conclusive as we’re likely to get. We can’t say for sure whether the liberty taken in the first line is specifically a Scandinavianism or not, but we can say that it’s at least not English. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 22 '17 at 23:05
  • @Janus I don't give 'answers' to questions I've close-voted. I consider that comments are the more suitable vehicle for an answer (where one might be useful) in such cases. // Your 'particle verb vs preposition verb' terminology is far from being universally accepted. I think that multi-word verb // inseparable / optionally separable / obligatorily separable // transitive / intransitive are universally understood and unambiguous. That's not to say that arguments about transparency/idiom status, cohesiveness of verb-particle and grading into verb + PP, aren't always with us. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 22 '17 at 23:33
  • Not English, but a credit to how loose and baggy acceptable spoken English can be. Interesting that there's a possible literal Norwegian undertext. Most importantly a great pop song . – John Feb 01 '20 at 22:50

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It's a music lyric and hence has some liberty.

But "take on" is a fairly common idiom in several contexts. It can mean "engage in combat", but a less aggressive meaning is to accept some burden or responsibility. Google finds "she didn't want to take on more responsibilities", "why would I want to take on an apprentice", "why did I want to take on the role as a GM", "I want to take on Usain Bolt's legacy", "does someone want to take on this project".

"Take on me" can thus be considered to be a plea for "you" to take on the burdens and responsibilities of having a relationship with "me". Or it can simply be considered a poetic rewording of "take me on" (which can itself be interpreted in a number of ways).

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  • Or perhaps it's ... This answer is genref and then POB. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 22 '17 at 22:26
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    Most of this doesn’t actually work—only the last sentence is a possibility. The take on you mention and quote is a particle verb, not a preposition verb. That means that when its object is a pronoun, it must come between the verb and the particle. If we’re talking about the role as a GM, one might ask, “Why did I want to take it on”, but never “*Why did I want to take on it”. The equivalent preposition verb “take me on” follows in the next line and is unquestionably grammatical, if up for interpretation. The question here is if the particle verb “take on me” exists and what it means then. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 22 '17 at 22:37
  • @JanusBahsJacquet - So you're saying that "Why did I want to take the role of GM on" is "more correct"??? – Hot Licks Oct 23 '17 at 01:54
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    @HotLicks No, certainly not. That’s quite ungrammatical. The difference is only apparent when the object is a pronoun (like ‘me’). Compare “She took on a new job” -> “She took it on” (not “She took on it”) vs “She banked on her brother” -> “She banked on him” (not “She banked him on”). When the object is a noun phrase (“a new job”, “her brother”), you can’t tell them apart; but you can when when it’s a simple pronoun. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 23 '17 at 07:43
  • @JanusBahsJacquet - Virtually every text on English construction will tell you that a pronoun is a word that substitutes for a noun. Certainly some word orders are more idiomatic than others, but, especially in a poem or lyric, the order is certainly acceptable. And, as I said, there is a (somewhat subtle, in this case) semantic difference between the two orderings. – Hot Licks Oct 23 '17 at 11:49
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    @HotLicks The fact that pronouns are substitutes for noun phrases does not mean that their syntactic properties are identical, too. To me, the only semantic difference between the two orderings is that one means something and the other doesn’t. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 23 '17 at 11:51
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    @JanusBahsJacquet You comments are very interesting to native speakers like me who simply have an idiomatic understanding of the language. We instinctively know when something sounds right and when it doesn't, but never properly understand why. Until we follow a thread like this. Thanks too to HL. – WS2 Feb 02 '20 at 00:22