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Funny comparisons between English and Spanish idioms
Hi English learners!
There is something of learning English that amuses me a lot and it is when I try to learn idioms and common sayings in English. Obviously they can not be translated literally, but what is funny is how every community created a saying to express the same thing but how they chose many different examples to do that.
There are some curious examples, but today I would like to focus on some expressions which are completely different and use parts of the body. A funny example is 'to pull someone’s leg' which in Spanish would be 'to pull someone's hair' when you want to say that someone is cheating you. Is the hair for a Spanish speaker more important than his leg? Another one is 'two heads are better than one', which in Spanish would be 'two eyes can see more than just one'. Heads or eyes?... I could find other examples... When you say: 'it costs an arm and a leg', Spanish speakers would prefer keeping their eyes because we say' it costs an eye'... 'To bite your lip' is in Spanish 'to bite your tongue'. Is that because Spanish people are more talkative? 'Put your foot in it' is in Spanish 'to put your leg on it' (not only the foot, but the whole leg)... and 'to cost an arm and a leg' is in Spanish 'to cost an egg' (it is important to note here that egg is commonly understood like a part of men's body, but expressed in an very informal way)...
Well, it is always difficult to include idioms in our conversations but, as English speakers would say in this situation: 'Rome wasn't built in a day', which in Spanish would be 'Zamora wasn't won in an hour (Zamora is a Spanish city where there was a famous battle).
I would like you to take part in the post and to add some of those idioms you know (your favourite ones or those we can compare with other languages). Thanks for reading and sharing!!! :)
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Phrasal verbs
I've studied English since I was eighteen (it means long time... haha) and I've always enjoyed the learning process. But my enthusiasm crashed one day into what I think is the hardest think to learn for a Spanish native speaker: phrasal verbs. Trying to memorize the huge amount of phrasal verbs that English people normally use in their everyday speech is a hard work for me. Obviously, English native speakers don't realize how difficult this could be for an English learner because they use them without paying much attention. But for an English learner phrasal verbs can become a nightmare.
If you are an English native speaker and you've never thought of this, stop for a while and consider the next. All those verbs in combination with all those prepositions have no sense at all for us, learners. If you try to translate them literally they might seem funnier. For instance, when you say 'put out', it doesn't mean that you want to put something outside a place, but you mean 'extinguish'... How could we, English learners, know that? It's impossible to imagine. Does 'to break up' mean break something at a high level? Does 'run out of' mean that you are running and then going out of somewhere? Intuition here is completely useless!! But, when you discover how much these expressions are used by English speakers you reach the conclusion that they are really important to understand informal speech.
From my point of view, if you can use and understand some of them you are getting a higher level in your English learning process. Speaking to English native people to fix them in your mind, making lists to memorize them or paying attention to them when you read a text could be good things to improve your use of phrasal verbs. At least, it's what I'm trying to do, but if you have any other good suggestion, please, be free and express yourself here. Of course, they will be very welcome for me and for a lot of English learners who are desperately struggling to achieve this goal. Thank you!
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