“Hang up your coat!”
“Are you into baseball?”
“I could really go for a pizza right now!”
“You’re pulling my leg!”
“It cost me an arm and a leg!”
These are just a few examples of what we refer to as idioms. They are so much a part of the English language that we really can’t converse for very long without using them. However, many of them are hard or impossible to find in a regular dictionary, and it usually doesn’t work to translate them word-for-word into another language. After all, in Spanish, for example, something expensive costs “un ojo de la cara” – an eye of the face! If someone is jokingly telling you a lie, he is pulling your hair rather than your leg! That’s why at Cincilingua we make sure to teach a great number of idioms. If our student is to speak English like a native, they are essential.
Personally, I am grateful for idioms. As a native speaker of English, I can pass them on to my students. They are an important part of my job, or, to put it another way, my bread and butter!
