By Shaun Tumpane
Laguna Woods Globe columnist
Without beating around the bush, I’d like to cut you all some slack and, better late than never, share an interesting conversation I had with a Turkish friend of mine.
We were debating which language was easier to learn, Turkish or English. Turkish was the first foreign language to which I was exposed (at age 8), and English was the first language to which my friend, Erdal, was exposed. We agreed that Turkish was easier to learn than English, but we had different reasons.
My reasoning was that Turkish is, with very few exceptions, a phonetic language, and, as we all know, English is not. Erdal, on the other hand, said English is a language replete with idioms.
All languages have idioms; however, it does seem that English is lousy with the things. Imagine you know only the basics of conversational English, and you ask an American how he’s feeling, and the response is, “I’m a touch under the weather.” Or you are giving directions to an American, and he has a vacuous look on his face and says, “I’m sorry, my head’s in the clouds.”
Or when you see an agitated man yelling at the American, and when you ask him what he said to the irate individual, and he replies, “I gave him the cold shoulder.”
Erdal challenged me to speak without using one idiom for one hour, and guess what? I dropped the ball – idiom for failure.
I have to say that it had never occurred to me that our language – American English, not to be confused with the “King’s English” – is positively riddled with combinations of words that, when translated literally, make no sense.
Don’t believe me? Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but I researched the matter, leaving no stone unturned, working until I was blue in the face, and, to make a long story short, this use of idioms has gotten way out of hand.
See what I mean? I’m not pulling your leg. I’m not disparaging the use of idioms, but it does seem that at times we…
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