One of the most interesting and perhaps most challenging things about learning another language is that, no matter how much you study it, you didn't grow up in the culture. Pop culture and family culture is part of it, but there's also language culture. There are some phrases or verbal affectations that we use every once in a while that nobody taught us--we just know them.
So the other day, I was having a conversation. It wasn't a real conversation. It was all taking place in my head, but the people I was conversing with in my head exist in real life. (Boy, do I sound like a head case!) The other conversants were non-native English speakers, but people who speak very good English. We were discussing a homework assignment and whether something would constitute unethical behavior or not. "Ethics, Shmethics!" I said jokingly. And this is where my imaginary conversation got derailed. Would my friends know what that meant? They could probably pick up on it from the tone of my voice, but would they think, "Ha! What a silly thing she did there, repeating the word and putting shm- at the front of it!" ? Native English speakers know this construction... it means, "I *ahem* don't know what you're talking about."
In my last week in Spain, my company had a party where a number of us from work went out to dinner and then to a bar. It was supposed to be to celebrate Christmas and those who were leaving, but if those were the purposes behind the outing, they were awfully well hidden in the eating and getting drunk and general non-acknowledgement of either of those things. By the time we got to the bar, two of my coworkers who were around my age, let's call them M and G, had finally drunk enough false courage to try out their English with me. Somewhere in the course of the conversation (if you could call it a conversation), M, in a bit of a stupor, jokingly proclaimed someone a liar. G, definitely buzzed, latched on to the word, "Liar, liar!" she repeated. "Pants on fire!" I couldn't help but add on. (Let me point out that I was not drunk.) M and G looked at me. "What?" "Liar, liar, pants on ... um...fire..." I then proceeded to try to explain the phrase. It just strikes me as amusing, because among native English speaking friends, we'd laugh and move on, or maybe stop to reminisce about games we played on the playground as children for a moment. But this is where the real cultural richness lies--learning what no one is ever going to teach you in school. Seriously, where else are M and G going to learn that, in English, flaming pants is a dead giveaway that you're fibbing?
I'd be interested to hear, what English expression or word game can you think of that English learners would never learn in class?
2 comments:
Okay, here's one of my favorite sayings, and it's likely incomprehensible to non-native English speakers. I am rather confident in that fact, since I usually get blank stares or strange looks even when I use it among the natives—I think it's quite a Southern US thing, anyway. Well, here it is: "If I had my druthers."
The delightful combination of slurred pronunciation, Southern inflection, and plain ol' English contraction into a spell-able, read-able, albeit non-existent, word never ceases to give me joy. Every time I say it, I can almost feel my tongue smoothly concatenating the once independent words into a silky flow of Southern character. On top of that, it's a supremely useful phrase: it's the most concise expression of the intended concept that I've found. Nothing else really communicates quite what this phrase does.
I doubt any ESL classes or English educations ever cover this gem.
Ah, one more thing. Your post started me wondering...the internet changes a lot. I wonder how it has changed the non-English comprehension of decidedly English idioms and expressions. Take, for example, internet memes that are English in origin. "O hai! I can haz cheezburger?" "ROFLCOPTER." "1337." YTMND. "All Your Base." "O RLY?" These, and many others, all depend almost solely upon English comprehension of the intended or represented phrase. Yet, at least to us, they seem internet- and world-wide.
I guess this line of thought engenders two questions:
1) Are these memes really as global as we thought, therefore crossing the bounds of the English language as idioms of the past have not; or do we simply perceive them as such because we are English-centric?
2) If memes really are the idioms that have jumped the barrier between English and other linguistic backgrounds, what does this mean for the concept you termed "real cultural richness"? (For example, does it mean English is using the internet to enrich the world in our culture more than in the past, or does it mean that cultural richness is being diluted by mass comprehension?)
Wow, I should go to bed.
That "Liar, Liar, pants on fire" story gets me every time. I just cannot help but giggle at flaming pants being an indication of falsehood. : )
PS: I'm really excited that you're blogging again.
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