Analysis of Informal Food-related Idioms and Idiomatic Expressions in the English Language
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52340/idw.2023.37Keywords:
English language, food-related idioms, linguistics, semantic analysis, translation problemsAbstract
The article deals with the informal food-related idioms and idiomatic expressions which are used in the English Language. The study of idioms has quite a long history in linguistics. They constitute one important part of the language and culture. Knowing a language includes knowing idioms in that language. The use of idioms is so wide-spread that an understanding of these expressions is essential to successful communication, whether in listening, speaking, reading, or writing. As a large number of idioms are not intelligible to learners at first sight and their meanings typically cannot be guessed through the analysis of the components, teaching and learning idioms have always been a problematic and challenging part of language. It is recognized that idiomatic expressions add grace and exactness to the language. The paper also reveals that it is often difficult to translate an idiom from one language to another and attempts to translate them literally from the student’s native tongue usually lead to roundabout expression of meaning and, more often, to confusion. For that reason, we should make their study an integral part of the teaching process. The given paper includes an overview of the definitions of idioms existing in different linguistic dictionaries and in the works of famous linguists and researchers. Moreover, it also emphasizes that idioms are fun to learn and they make the language much more colourful. The main goal of our study was to find out some informal food-related idioms being used in the English language and make their lexical-semantic analysis.
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