Idioms are a very important part of the English language: you are told that if you want to go far (succeed) you should pull your socks up (make a serious effort to improve your behaviour, the quality of your work, etc.) and use your grey matter (brain).1 Learning and translating idioms have always been very difficult for foreign language learners. The present paper explores some of the reasons why English idiomatic expressions are difficult to learn and translate. It is not the aim of this paper to attempt a comprehensive survey of the vast amount of material that has appeared on idioms in Adams and Kuder (1984), Alexander (1984), Dixon (1983), Kirkpatrick (2001), Langlotz (2006), McCarthy and O'Dell (2002), and Wray (2002), among others. The paper concentrates on idioms as a learning-translation problem; it makes no claim to be comprehensive or academically rigorous. Leech (1989) defines an idiom as follows: “An idiom is a group of two or more words which we have to treat as a unit in learning a language. We cannot arrive at the meaning of the idiom just by adding together the meanings of the words inside it. E.g.John and Mary usedto be hardup (='They had very little money'.)”(P.186) To be more exact, an idiom is a sequence of words which is semantically and syntactically restricted, so that they function as a single unit. From a semantic point of view, the meanings of the individual words cannot be summed to produce the meanings of the idiomatic expression as a whole. Thus, fly off the handle, which means lose one's temper, cannot be understood in terms of the meanings of fly, off, or handle. The idiom phrase hot air, which means empty or boastful talk, is neither hot nor air; with hot air we are dealing with a set phrase where the meaning cannot be suggested on the basis of the two constituent words. The idiomatic meaning of spill the beans in So who spilt the beans (=told the secret) about her affair with David? has nothing to do with beans or with spilling in its literal sense. The foreign-language learner is left trying to figure out where and how the beans were spilt. From a syntactic viewpoint, the constituent parts of an idiom often do not permit the usual variability they display in other contexts. The point to be emphasized here is this: most idioms do not lend themselves easily to manipulation by speakers and writers; they are invariable and must be learned as wholes, but concord ofnumber, person and gender in the idiom phrase is still necessary, i.e. the verbs must be put into the correct form, and pronouns must agree with their antecedents: I don't give a hoot for her opinion! 2 • She doesn't give a hoot for my opinion! etc.)║He won, but only by the skin of his teeth2• She won, but only by the skin of her teeth• Iwon, but only by the skin ofmy teeth,I had to run for the train, and caught it by the skin of myteeth, etc.║He kept pullingmy arm, throwing me off my balance 2 • She kept pulling his arm, throwing him off his balance • We kept pullingher arm, throwingher offher balance, etc.2 The present paper is divided into five parts, as follows: Part I: An Overview; PART II: Learner’s Difficulties with Idioms; PART III: Some Pedagogical recommendations and Suggestions about Idioms; Part IV: Activities to Practice Idiomatic Expressions; Part V: Summary and Conclusion.
Paronomasia is a recognized rhetorical device by which poets could play with words that are similar or identical in form but different in meaning. The present study aims to identify paronomasia in Arabic and English. To achieve the aim of the study, a corpus of selected verses chosen from two famous figures in Arabic and English literatures and analyzed thoroughly. The analysis of data under investigation reveals that paronomasia is a crucial aid used by poets to portrait the real world as imaginative. It further shows that the concept of paronomasia in English is not the same as in Arabic. In English, there are echoes of the Arabic jinās, i.e., there are counterpart usages of similar devices, yet English rhetoricians have not defined or c
... Show MoreAir pollution is very important topic for those interested in studying the environment because of its importance and the damage caused by it to human, animal and plant life. This research addresses the concept of air pollution, its causes, and its danger, and sheds light on the influence of climate elements on environmental pollution and the effect of temperature, rain, humidity, wind direction and speed, and atmospheric pressure on the increase or decrease of air pollution. This research discusses the sources of air pollution, including natural ones, including dust, smoke resulting from fires, erupting volcanoes, and others, including those resulting from human uses such as the use of fuel and others. The research addressed the dam
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This research provides a new method to study praise poetry that can be used as a course to teach English and Arabic to students in the College of Education. This research answers two questions:
- Is it possible to examine praise poetry as a tagmeme?
- Is this analysis of great help in teaching English and Arabic to students in the College of Education?
The data that will be chosen for the purpose of analysis are two of Shakespeare's sonnets and two of AL Mulik's poems. The sonnets selected for this purpose are 17 and 18. AL Mulik's poems selected for the same purpose are 8 and 9.
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... Show MoreThis study is an attempt to investigate the conceptual metaphor of UP and DOWN commonly used in Iraqi community. Some of the metaphorical expressions in Iraqi colloquial Arabicarewidely used by Iraqi speakers in everyday language. Ithas been analyzed by following the cognitive theory of metaphor (Lakoff& Johnson,1980).The study indicates that the Iraqi speakerexperiences more of the metaphorical expressions of UP and DOWN to referto many of the abstract concepts that shape his/her impression of everyday life situations.
A stylistic study in the poetry of Hafiz Ibrahim, praise be to God, Lord of the worlds, and prayers and peace be upon his best messengers, and the seal of his prophets, Muhammad and his good and pure family, and after ...
The poet Hafez Ibrahim is considered one of the well-known poets in the modern era, and his language was distinguished by sobriety, eloquence in expressions, and beautiful meanings And he had my journey in the study of his poetry a stylistic study, and the research came with an introduction in which the concept of stylistics was briefly explained, since it was studied by many researchers, then divided the research into three topics: I studied in the first the construction of the poem, and I stood at the most importan
Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), is one of the myeloproliferative disorders with a characteristic cytogenetic abnormality resulting in the BCR-ABL fusion gene. Imatinib Mesylate is an effective agent for treating patients in all stages of CML. According to the annual Iraqi cancer registry 2019, the total number of chronic myeloproliferative disorders was 338. The percentage and incidence rates were 0.94% and 0.86%, respectively, with a higher incidence rate in males than females (1.12 in males and 0.60 in females). In this registry, no details about CML, so this study aimed to estimate the number of CML patients who attended the national center of hematology from 2005 until 2020 and investigate their epidemiological and clinic-pathol
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The study aimed to monitor the concept of reputation in the previous literature, its relationship to mental image and identity, and to reveal recent trends in its measurement Techniques.
The study relied on a descriptive approach using library survey and comparative analysis, and the study reached following conclusions:
Despite the beginning of the first signs of reputation In the fifties of the last century, however, Defining and standardizing the concept with clear and specific dimensions began in the 1990s and the beginning of the third millennium. The concept of reputation refers to the stakeholders’ overall evaluation of organizations, which reflects their perceptions of
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APDBN Rashid, 7th International Conference on Multidisciplinary Sciences (7th ICOMUS), 2021
This research provides a new method to study praise poetry that can be used as a course to teach English and Arabic to students in the College of Education. This research answers two questions: Is it possible to examine praise poetry as a tagmeme? Is this analysis of great help in teaching English and Arabic to students in the College of Education? The data that will be chosen for the purpose of analysis are two of Shakespeare's sonnets and two of AL Mulik's poems. The sonnets selected for this purpose are 17 and 18. AL Mulik's poems selected for the same purpose are 8 and 9. Each line in both English and Arabic data is numbered by the researcher herself. Then, those lines are grouped into sentences to facilitat
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