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Getting your tongue in a twist
The joys of language learning
I often get asked how many languages I speak, and the honest answer is one — English. Thirty-three years and counting, I’ve had to relearn some rules and expand my knowledge over the years. This is mainly due to the fact that I teach the language, and so must be fully prepared to answer a range of questions about pretty much everything.
Why does foot change to feet? What’s a male horse? Why do we use the present continuous to talk about both what we’re doing now and what we’re going to do in the future? Why are you obsessed with contractions?
Some people might find such questions annoying, but as someone who also asks those questions when learning other languages, I relish them.
Idioms and expressions
It’s not just these grammatical intricacies and exceptions, but also the underlying cultural nuances and historical influences that reveal so much in each and every language.
‘That’s not my cup of tea’ is a very British one which speaks for itself.
‘You can’t have your cake and eat it’, translates to ‘you can’t have sheep and money’ in Croatian. No surprise given their strong agricultural past and present.
