Post by account_disabled on Mar 4, 2024 23:20:24 GMT -8
According to the British Council , one of the most prestigious institutions in language teaching, learning the idiomatic expressions used by native speakers of a language is a way to improve linguistic skills in a foreign language and, most importantly, to get closer to its culture . And, as Mahatma Gandhi said, “the culture of a nation resides in the heart and soul of its people.” In this sense, these colloquialisms allow you to communicate more effectively in the language being learned, since their use implies that the person has understood a code and a metaphorical way of expressing themselves . Do you want to know more about idiomatic expressions and why you should pay attention to them when studying a language? We explain it to you below. CTA Post What are idiomatic expressions? Examples and how to interpret them Idiomatic expressions are phrases whose meaning is not literal , but rather acquire meaning only by joining a set of words. That is, if you translate them literally, these expressions lack logic or their meaning is difficult to deduce.
This reason, the difficulty of these constructions lies in the fact that, to understand them, you have to go beyond the purely linguistic and know certain cultural issues of the language . For example, if a person tells you in Spanish that “he is teasing you ,” the first thing that would come to mind is someone drinking or teasing someone else. However, its actual meaning is to joke or deceive , depending on the context. Likewise, in English there is the same idiomatic expression, but Europe Mobile Number List with some difference. In this case, no one "drinks or grabs someone else's hair", but rather "someone pulls someone's leg", as native English speakers say to pull someone's leg . Something similar happens with “from grapes to pears ,” a very useful idiomatic expression to say that something happens on rare occasions , and that in English is once in a blue moon , that is, “when there is a blue moon.” As you can see, these phrases are examples of idiomatic expressions, which may or may not coincide in several languages .
For example, the phrase “be all ears” ―which does not mean that you have your face and body full of ears, but that you pay close attention to your interlocutor―, in English, coincides and is also said to be all ears . However, there are other idiomatic expressions that do not have their equivalent in the other language. This is what happens with to push up daisies , which is actually a metaphor for saying that someone is dead. Why is it important to learn idiomatic expressions? Idiomatic expressions are very relevant elements during the process of learning a language, because they contribute to thinking about the cultural codes of this foreign culture . In this way, they help train abstract thinking , since, to understand them, you need to think metaphorically. On the other hand, they are a valuable resource for acquiring new vocabulary and communicating better in another language. Idiomatic expressions are a typical element in most languages and are constantly used in very varied contexts .
