XVIII Международный конкурс научно-исследовательских и творческих работ учащихся
Старт в науке
Idioms in the english language. Why should we know them?
Автор работы награжден дипломом победителя II степени
Полная версия работы доступна во вкладке "Файлы работы" в формате PDF
Introduction
The reason I have chosen the topic
Last summer I was in an English camp. There were a lot of students of my age from Moscow and Moscow region. We studied English every day and our teachers were native speakers.
I could not always understand what my teachers were talking about and one of the reasons I did not understand them was the fact that they used a lot of idioms. There were also some misunderstanding and confusion because of that. That is why I decided to explore the issue further in more details. I realized that we also use a lot of idioms in Russian in our informal communication. We even have a lot of similar idioms!
I started surfing the Internet and discovered that some idioms appeared hundreds of years ago. Besides, there were really funny pictures which illustrated how stupid it could be if we tried to translate an idiom word by word!
Since all my friends study English at school and believe that it will be very useful in their future life, I decided to introduce some really useful and popular idioms in a small booklet. Hope you will like it!
The definition of an idiom
Of course, it was logical to refer to the Internet in order to find the definition of an idiom. The Wikipedia states that:
An idiom (also called idiomatic expression) is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning conventionally understood by native speakers. This meaning is different from the literal meaning of the idiom's individual elements. In other words, idioms don't mean exactly what the words say.
The definition I liked the most comes from the website www.knowyourphrase.com:
An idiomis a group of words, and the meaning of these words is not immediately apparent when you look at them..
In other words, it means that we should not translate idioms word by word using a dictionary. We must not get an idiom literary. Instead, we should understand the meaning of the whole phrase; otherwise we will definitely get confused!
So, let’s get a closer look to learn more about them!
Main Body
The historical background of an English idiom
Idioms are widely used in the English language, especially in the spoken, non-official language. We may even say that English idioms are a phenomenon that makes the English language very tricky. If you try to get the literate meaning and to translate the words from an idiomatic expression with a dictionary, you will get incorrect meaning. There are more than 20,000 idioms in the modern English language. Some of them are hundreds of years old. Basically, an idiom is a form of speech that has become fixed in the language with the time. Today an idiom usually is figurative in a modern context. But once it had a literate meaning. It is surprising, but every idiom has its origin, a true story of its birth, which may help us understand where a phrase came from. Let me introduce some examples.
The idiom «Straight from the horse’s mouth» means that you get the required information from the most reliable source. While the history of the origin of this idiom says that in 1900s the buyers of horses would check the animal’s age by inspecting its teeth. This way, to look into a horse’s mouth was the best way to understand how old it was.
Another popular idiom «Let the cat out of your bag» today means to give up a secret without willing to do so. But if we look into the past, there is a historical fact that in the 1700s on the streets of big cities there was a common fraud: valuable pigs were replaced by cats and sold in closed bags so that the customer was unaware of what he was buying.
One more idiom «Bite the bullet» today describes a situation in which a person has to cope with serious problems or even pain. But in 1800s patients of hospitals really had to bite bullets in order to overcome serious pain during the surgery, because there was no anesthesia at that time.
«Butter someone up» in the modern language means that a person praise or flatter someone in order to gain some favor or get benefits in a situation. But originally this saying came from a religious act in India, when people would through butter balls into statures of Gods to please them
As you can see, some idioms are hundreds of years old and have a very interesting, unique historical background. All that seemed very interesting to me and I continued my work by listing some popular
Idioms of the English language I have already come across
Frequently used idioms of English. My personal choice.
To make my own list of idioms, I did the following work:
I surfed the Internet to find idiomatic expressions in English and put down around one hundred of them
Then I looked through my initial list and excluded the idioms with unknown words or complicated lexical forms.
Then I tried to understand the meaning of each idiom from my list by translating it word by word. In all cases I got funny results and it was obvious that my idioms should have some other meaning rather than literate translation.
Finally, I tried to pick up the funniest idioms, 10 in total
After that I used the Internet and the Oxford Dictionary of English idioms to find out the true meaning of the expressions from my list.
«It’s raining cats and dogs!» At first, it may seem to a student that real cats and dogs are falling from the sky in the form of rain. To me, it was a funny and frightening picture at the same time. But as you may understand, animals are not involved at all. The idiom is aimed to say that it is pouring with rain. This idiom is one of the strangest ones in the English language, because there are several versions concerning its origin. Some of the most realistic versions are the following:
These idiom origins from the French word “catadupe” which means “waterfall”. Since people were often illiterate, they misspelled the word with the time and created the expression which sounded similar.
Another version is that there were days when it was raining so heavily that streets were covered with water and it flew so fast, that poor stray animals were caught in it due to the bad weather. To me, this version seems more realistic but more sad, too.
«I smell a rat!» If you translate this phrase, you may get a disgusting feeling imagining yourself in a room which is full of rats. Rats usually bring diseases and are very unwanted in a house. But in reality, this expression means that something is not right in the situation. Maybe there is a piece of lie or even a trap! If you «smell a rat», you should be careful and analyze the situation one more time to find out the truth! To smell a rat means being suspicious of a situation. This idiom came from the past when rats were common carriers of disease. Dogs could easily smell a rat and kill it. So, the image of a sniffing for a rat dog was transferred to a person who was suspicious of something.
«To have a sweet tooth» I came across this idiom for the first time at the age of eight, in our school textbook “Starlight”. The whole unit had such a name and was dedicated to healthy and unhealthy food. So, this idiom was familiar to me. But when I saw it three years ago, I imagined a funny person who has candies in his mouth instead of teeth! Of course, now I understand that this idiom means that a person who has a sweet tooth just can’t live without sweets, cakes, chocolate, etc.
«To be under the weather» doesn’t mean any rain or snow falling on you. This simply means to feel sick or unwell. This idiom has also a very interesting origin and comes deep into the past, in the 1800s. When a sailor on a ship was sick he usually went down and stayed under the deck of the ship to help his recovery. Since the weather during the voyage changed several times a day, a sick person would simply hide from it under the deck!
«When pigs fly» is one of my favorite idioms. Of course, everyone knows that pigs can’t fly. You may hear this expression when someone says something like “I will do it when pigs fly!” It is easy to assume that the speaker doesn’t have any intentions to make an action. In other words, he will never do it! The synonym to be used is “it is very unlikely” or even “impossible”
«It’s a cat’s meow» This idiom means that something is very nice, gentle or cute. The origin of the idiom is unknown, but it is logical to assume that cats bring warm feelings and tenderness into a house. They are the creatures anyone wants to play with. So, the sound they make is compared to something nice and really pleasant.
«Use your loaf» Literally this idiom would mean that everyone should have his own loaf of bread, but of course, this is not the meaning. This idiom just suggests thinking yourself and using your brains to make a decision!
This idiom was originated in the UK during the World War One. The soldiers dug trenches and hid in it for a long time until the firing reduced or stopped. If a soldier for some reason had to come out he could not risk his head, so he would use a loaf of bread to see if the snipers are still around. Soldiers really had to think well to stay alive!
«It’s a piece of cake» means something really simple! This idiom doesn’t have anything to do with real food. If you imagined a cake on a dish, you were on a wrong way! The idea of cake being “easy” originated in the 1870’s when cakes were given out as prizes for winning competitions. In particular, there was a tradition in the US slavery states where slaves would circle around a cake at a gathering. The most elegant pair would win the cake in the middle. From this the term “cake walk” and “piece of cake” came into use, both meaning that something was easy to do.
«My car is a lemon»idiom has nothing in common with a fruit, but I have imagined a person sitting inside of a big yellow lemon. So, what does it mean? If you think of a taste this fruit provides, it is sour. Not many can eat lemons as they are, without sugar! The origin of this idiom is not very clear; it goes back to 1900s and means something worthless. In other words, if your car is a lemon, it keeps breaking all the time and doesn’t cost much!
«I’m over the moon today» means something extremely pleased and happy. This is probably one of the oldest idioms from my list, because its origin goes to 1600s. It comes from a popular nursery rhyme in which a cow jumps over the Moon:
Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed,
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
As you can see, idioms from my list have long history and a very imprecise meaning. The only way not to get confused in a conversation with a native speaker is to know what they mean!
As we do not have much time to study the idioms at school, I asked myself a question: “How would my classmates feel if they come across an idiomatic expression which must not be translated word by word”? To get an answer, I had to conduct a survey.
A survey conducted in my class
In order to understand how well my classmates can understand English idioms, I decided to conduct a survey. For this, I have chosen five idioms from my list and printed them out. In the morning, I distributed the idioms among my classmates and asked them write their understanding of an each idiom without using a dictionary. I collected the results the same day so that my friends could not use their computers of ask their parents for help.
The list was as follows:
It’s raining cats and dogs
My car is a lemon
I’m under the weather
I’m over the moon today
I smell a rat
There are 16 people in my group, and only 10 of them accepted the challenge! From these ten people, only two demonstrated that they could get the meaning correctly. Three more people got partial meaning of the idioms. The rest tried to make literate translation, got confused and did not manage to understand the meaning.
Later, we discussed the survey in class and many of my friends said that it was fun to work with idioms. We even tried to think of similar idiomatic expressions in Russian language!
One of my friends had a valuable comment about the World FIFA event that took place in Russia 2018 summer. Our country was full of foreigners. They all were crazy about Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Samara, and Kaliningrad. They said that our country was beautiful and amazing, people were friendly and kind. But all of them stated one and the same problem: there aren’t many Russians who can speak English. Well, probably most of us can make simple phrases in English and understand simple sentences, but when it comes to idioms, we all get easily confused!
English idioms are great in number and are widely used in everyday speech. They make language more emotional and less formal, so, it would be just great if we learned the most popular ones.
Comparing English idioms to Russian idioms
When speaking about English and Russian idioms it becomes clear that they are very different, because they developed under different historic, social and economic conditions. So we can state that they vary in the same way as the historical paths of the two countries. Indeed we have unlike geographical and climate positions, very different national characters, and often conflicting mentality.
We should also note that many English and Russian cannot be understood without the perception of the authentic way of life. All this makes it very difficult to explain and compare Russian and English idioms. When choosing the best Russian equivalent for an English proverb or saying we should correspond to at least the main meaning of the unit. There are a number of proverbs and sayings which are easily translated into the Russian language and can be called their full equivalents. For example:
To seize the bull by horns – взять быка за рога
Some idioms are very similar in meaning. For example:
To be in someone else’s shoes – быть в чьей-то шкуре, на чьем-то месте
Some other idioms need explanation, or even they have nothing in common with the Russian variants.
For instance:
“Between the devil and deep blue sea” is translated into Russian as «между двух огней».
If we want to get the literal translation we’ll have the following: «между чертом и глубоким синим морем». Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that in Russian and English proverbs different images can be used to demonstrate the similar idea. This is because we have different social standards of life. For example, the proverb “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” can be translated as «Трава всегда зеленее по ту сторону забора». Although we do not have such a proverb in Russian, we have one with a very similar meaning: “Хорошотам, гденаснет!”
To sum up, I have tried to match the English idioms from my list to some popular Russian sayings. This is what I got.
It’s raining cats and dogs! = Льет, как из ведра!
I smell a rat = Запахложареным
To have a sweet tooth = Бытьсладкоежкой
I am under the weather = Менясегодняштормит
When pigs fly = Когда рак на горе свистнет
It’s a cat’s meow = Первый сорт, пальчики оближешь!
Use your loaf = Шевели мозгами
It’s a piece of cake = Проще пареной репы; Пара пустяков; Просто, как дважды два
My car is a lemon = Моя машина, как консервная банка
I’m over the moon today = Я на седьмом небе от счастья
As you can see, even if we don’t have 100% coincidence between Russian and English idioms, many of them have similar meaning. I think that it proves that both our nations have similar ethical standards and cultural values.
Traditional idioms may be called a cultural aspect because it gives understanding of the folk oral art of both countries. Proverbs, sayings and idioms have been used in everyday spoken language for centuries. Our great- grand parents passed the peculiarity of the language and the folk wisdom to their next generation, and we have inherited thousands of people’s sayings and idioms so far. Some of them are very difficult to understand because our modern lives have greatly changed. Bus some are still very popular and true to life.
I have recently started learning French, and I know that there are a lot of idioms in the French language as well. So, I can assume that every language in the World has its own idioms which may be absolutely unique or, on the contrary, will correlate well with idioms in other languages. Idioms are a social phenomenon, a big part of a product which is called “a language”. In other words, idioms of any language reflect cultural aspects, values, norms, rules and standards of behavior that are common in the society.
Conclusion
In conclusion I would like to summarize why we should learn and know some frequently used idioms of the language of our study.
First of all, since idioms are commonly used in speech, we should know the meaning of them just to understand native speaker, get the correct meaning and don’t get confused.
Secondly, since idioms are a very cultural thing, they will definitely help us to understand better social values, culture and traditions of the native speakers. We all need to know a foreign language for communication. Maybe it will be a useful and important tool in our successful careers in the future. And given all that, our speech will be less formal and more emotional. Yet, we will be able to understand people we deal with better.
Finally, using, understanding and knowing some idioms may be a fun way to learn a foreign language. Many of them are full of humor, others sound a bit weird but anyway they are very catchy and are easily learnt by heart!
As a result of my project, I have made a small booklet with my favorite idioms in it. Each idiom is illustrated by a funny picture giving us understanding how absurd it could be if we translated idioms word by word in order to get their literate meaning! I have also listed Russian equivalent for each idiom to prove that our countries have a lot of social and cultural norms in common.
I am glad that my classmates have found the topic interesting and realized the importance to know English idioms as a part of their learning process! Together with my English teacher we are going to use the materials from this project at English language lessons for year 5 to year 9 in our Lyceum. I am sure this will have a great practical value for students and help motivate them for further study!
The list of sources used in writing the project
Examples of English idioms, the meaning and origin of the idioms
https://www.ef.com/wwen/english-resources/english-idioms/
https://www.grammarcheck.net/idioms/
www.idiomsite.com/
https://www.usingenglish.com
https://www.smart-words.org/quotes-sayings/idioms-meaning.html
Definitions of idioms
The Oxford Idiomatic Dictionary
The Wikipedia
The comparison of Russian and English idioms
masterrussian.com/idioms/russian_idioms_5.htm
https://knowledge.allbest.ru/languages/