Idiomatic Speech II

Idiomatic Speech II

People will ask if they have to learn idiomatic expressions, which are made up of phrasal verbs and other words like nouns or determinants. I suppose if you are already secure in your job place and you have little possibility of coming into contact with an English language population you could get around the need of having to digest expressions of all sorts related to every walk of life. That is another way of saying related to different social class, other professions or situations that the speaker finds him in. Of course I am not here to debate whether or not class structure exists, suffice it to say that someone may end up using an expression orally, leaving you guessing what the meaning is, unless you have looked it up or questioned how it is constructed or asked yourself why we bother to talk the way we do. There are also cross culture differences to contend with. For example if somebody says they are in the black, given that the idiomatic expression is to be in the black, that would mean those people are in debt. Not so in Italy where black is not associated with owing money. There the person has to rethink how he used expressions with colors and adopt a new pattern of thinking. One has to keep in mind that the idiomatic expression will often use staple verbs like to be or have and those have to be conjugated according to the person who is speaking.

I would like to introduce the use of get which has been largely overlooked in older books on idioms and their expressions. Get is largely connected with movement, travel and destination but it is also used in conjunction with being something or with acquiring something as in making a purchase. Those are the three main uses along with it being used with the demonstrative that to relate understanding. Again one can just say “I understand” as opposed to saying “I got that”, but then again if you are exposed to so many who have preferred to use the demonstrative instead of the verb by itself then you will have fewer problems understanding.