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Idioms/Expressions and their use | ||
Tags: Idiom | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4754 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 9 of 18 03 February 2013 at 5:19am | IP Logged | ||
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As CCDI (1995) notes:
''… idioms are comparatively infrequent […] Nearly one third of the idioms in this dictionary occur less often than once per 10 million words of the corpus. The idioms in the highest frequency band occur in our data at least once per two million words of English. […] only a few of these occur as frequently as any of the words we have marked for frequency in The COBUILD English Dictionary. '' ''The most famous of these ‘old-fashioned’ idioms is probably -be raining cats and dogs-, which — as corpus linguists have repeatedly noticed — may hold the distinction of being the most-taught and least-used idiom in English. '' source: Is ''Time'' A-changin’?: A Synchronic Investigation of the Idioms Used in ''Time'' http://www2.english.su.se/nlj/metfest_06_07/Minugh_07.pdf Edited by Camundonguinho on 03 February 2013 at 5:26am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 10 of 18 06 February 2013 at 5:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Just what exactly constitutes an idiom is of considerable debate. I thank we can speak of a larger category of formulaic language that contains a wide variety of single word or multiple word units that seem to have two or more levels of meaning. Just this evening I heard somebody say to someone else, "what are you up to?" Is that an idiom? It may be considered a phrasal verb. But couldn't most phrasal verbs be considered idioms?
Depending of the definition of an idiom, they can be rare or very common especially in the spoken language. Edited by s_allard on 06 February 2013 at 9:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4673 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 11 of 18 07 February 2013 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
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''To be up to'' is not an idiom, but a phrasal verb.
Idioms in English contain a noun*, while the verb may be absent, as in: ''close, but no cigar'' (Collins Cobuild Idioms dictionary lists it under ''cigar''). In other languages, the difference between an idiom and a phrasal verb is not clear-cut (since both phrasal verbs and idioms are published in ''dicionários de frases feitas'' or ''dicionários de locuções'' [fixed phrases dictionaries; in Portuguese; ''rjecnici frazema'' [phraseology dictionaries; in Croatian]... --- *Expect in some proverbs like: Waste not, want not. But I would consider proverbs a different category. ... Idiomatic usage (=grammatical and natural sounding) is about using: 1. vocabulary in context (correct collocations) 2. synonyms and antonyms 3. phrasal verbs, idioms, proverbs 4. correct register http://www.dailywritingtips.com/idiomatic-english/ Edited by Medulin on 07 February 2013 at 1:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 12 of 18 07 February 2013 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
What authority says that idioms must contain a noun? Everything that I have read says that phrasal verbs are a type of idiom. In fact, phrasal verbs fit the classic definition of what is an idiom, i.e. an unit of two or more words whose meaning is not clearly derived from the meanings of the constituent words. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6708 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 18 07 February 2013 at 10:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Ideally we should check all the idioms we learn through Google (using quotes of course, otherwise the results will be wrong). If an expression is common on the internet then it will either be in active use or at least used in some very widespread texts. But of course we can't spend all our time doing that so instead we have to rely on hunches based on our reading and listening, and in the case of fairly rare, but not obsolete expressions we might not chance upon them - even though every native speaker knows those expressions and might use them. Using old lists of idiomatic expressions is problematic, and using slang dictionaries is even more so because slang changes too often and the authors may quote expressions because they find them amusing rather than because they are common. I don't see any simple solution to this problem, except just getting a lot of input and then accept that you sometimes utter a rare or even homebrewed concoction of words..
PS: s_allard is right: an idiomatic expression doesn't have to contain a noun - its meaning should just be somewhat unexpected considering which words it contains. On the other hand idiomatic expressions aren't pure nonsense combinations of words. Once you know the 'added' meaning you will often understand the thought processes which led someone to invent a certain expression. Phrasal verbs and things like that can also be idiomatic - or rather: at some point in their history someone chose to use a certain coonstruction among several possible ones. So the difference between idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs etc. is that you look at the later as constructions, i.e. you see the choice of prepositions or cases as a part of the syntax of the main word. But somewhere deep down in days of yore someone chose to use preposition with some verbs and no preposition with others. And that choice was idiomatic in its core. Edited by Iversen on 07 February 2013 at 10:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 14 of 18 07 February 2013 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm trying to understand this observation that idioms are so infrequent, something that seems counter-intuitive to many observers of spoken English. First of all, there is this question of the inclusion of phrasal verbs. If we include them, the numbers go way up. The other idea is that there are so many idioms that although their individual frequencies are very small, they are quite numerous. Edited by s_allard on 07 February 2013 at 8:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5565 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 15 of 18 07 February 2013 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
I think those classic overelaborate idioms are very rarely used by actual native speakers, and you wouldn't be encouraged to use them in good original writing, but some places where they might exist (I'm really not sure though): Childrens TV and books Comedy Series. In the language of day time TV hosts, sports reporters, weather reporters, journalists. Bad TV drama and soap operas Tabloid headlines Also, although classic idioms are rarely used by real live people (apart from our grandmothers), as we are all aware of them, they can always be used indirectly, or referred to, or adapted. eg - What's the weather like? - Bloody cats and dogs, mate - Do you wan't a drink? - A drink in the hand is worth two in the fridge, as they say. (That isn't especially funny or anything. They don't have to be) edit to add: It's funny sometimes to think how different TV and film really are from real life. For example in a lightweight drama or comedy, you could have a character who spoke in idioms and clichés, and it could be used to indicate he was just a regular guy, but in real life it would be quite weird. Edited by schoenewaelder on 07 February 2013 at 6:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5565 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 16 of 18 07 February 2013 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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oops, mispost. Delete it if you can. Edited by schoenewaelder on 07 February 2013 at 5:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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