VI Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2014

Nowadays we have a lot of languages. According to the information published by UNESCO, there are about 3000 languages in the world. Each language is unique and has a lot of interesting and specific idioms. “Language is arguably the most important component of the culture. It is impossible to understand the subtle nuances and deep meanings of another culture without knowing its language well” [1].

A word comes to be a very powerful means of communication but also it can be a cause of a great misunderstanding if it is not clearly understood by one of the speakers. Thus, the study of idioms should be considered very important and helpful for those who wish to get a clear idea of a language, its history, traditions and mentality of the nation.

English is a language particularly rich in idioms. The Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms, based on 200 million words of American English texts in the Cambridge International Corpus, unlocks the meaning of more than 5,000 idiomatic phrases used in contemporary American English. Paradoxical as it may seem but the first attempts of scientific investigations in English phraseology as well as the first dictionary of English phraseological units were elaborated and published in our country (by professor A.V. Kunin).

Although phraseological units became an object of special linguistic investigations in the beginning of the 20th century, some issues still remain the subject of debate. What is an idiom? What are the origins of idioms? How many different types of idioms can be defined? Are people from different cultures and backgrounds able to understand idioms in a foreign language? All these questions will be discussed in the present article.

The Oxford Dictionary defines an idiom as “a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words”. In modern linguistics, there is considerable confusion about the terminology associated with these word-groups. This confusion reflects different criteria or approaches of defining these phraseological units. But “we may safely assume that a free word-group is transformed into a phraseological unit when it acquires semantic inseparability and becomes synchronically non-motivated” [2, p.86].

Many linguists would say that idioms are figures of speech that deny the principle of compositionality. It might mean that idioms are words collocated together which became fixed over time. These word expressions are first commonly used in groups, slowly changing the definitions of each of the constituents forming one word group that develops a specialized meaning, thus creating an idiom.

In other words, an idiom is a phrase whose meaning cannot be understood literally. For example, when you say “it's raining cats and dogs”, you don't mean that cats and dogs are falling from the sky, but rather that it's raining heavily. Idioms are usually rather informal and include an element of personal comment on the situation. They are sometimes humorous or ironic.

As it was mentioned before, language reflects major components of the national culture, so idioms are like a mirror of the culture. «Idioms emerge in national languages on the basis of such vivid view of reality, which displays historical or spiritual experience associated with its cultural traditions because the subject of the nomination and speech is always a subject of national culture», says V.N. Telia [3, p.56]. If you want to find out exactly the nature of the national and cultural component in phraseology, first of all, you need to decide what constitutes its cultural identity.

The background and etymological origins of most idioms are at best obscure. This is the reason why a comparative study of differences between the idioms in different languages is somewhat difficult. But there are also some interesting cases where background, etymology and history are known. Some idioms of the "worldwide English" have first been seen in the works of writers like Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Lewis Carroll or even in the paperbacks of contemporary novelists. Biblical references are also the source of many idioms. Sports terms, technical terms, legal terms, military slang and even nautical expressions have found their way to the everyday use of English language. Here are some examples of these, some used in either American or British English and some used in both.

Sometimes extra-linguistic factors may account, for example, “to show the white feather” meaning ‘to act as a coward’ can be traced back to the days when cock-fighting was popular. A white feather in a gamecock’s plumage denoted bad breeding and was regarded as a sign of cowardice. Now that cock-fighting is no longer a popular sport, the phrase is felt as non-motivated.

Our language is a window on our mentality and helps understand what is culturally and morally important to us as a nation. One striking difference between Russian and English is how we view the essence or life force of a human being: “While the English can’t stop talking about the heart, Russians go on and on about the soul” [4]. To prove this assumption, the author gives a list of equivalent phraseological units in both languages:

в глубине души — at heart, in one's heart of heartsвсеми силами души —with all one's heartу тебя души нет! — you've got no heart!

с открытой душой — openheartedlyзаячья душа — chicken; yellowbelly (lit. hare-souled)продажная душа — corrupt, mercenary (lit. sell oneself, one’s soul)

душа болит (за) — smb's heart aches (for) (lit. soul ache)брать за душу — touch the heartвытягивать / выматывать душу из кого-л — wear smb. out (lit. pull out or drain the soul)

говорить по душам с кем-л — have a heart-to-heart talk with smb.до глубины души — to the depth/bottom of one's heartработать с душой — put one's heart into one's workсколько душе угодно — to one's heart's content

у него душа в пятки ушла — he has his heart in his mouth and so on.This might indicate that the English are more focused on the material world, whereas Russians are more interested in the spiritual.

Figurative meanings of idioms reflect the public consciousness of nations. For example, you know that national tree of Russia is a birch. It is traditionally used as a symbol of Russian nature and beauty. So a birch is perceived by a Russian person as a symbol of beauty and purity, sanctified and blessed by God. We have a lot of poems about this tree symbolizing our national values. Some poets often compared birches with beauty of Russian women. For this reason we have some Russian idioms such as “slender (slight) as a birch”, “beautiful as a birch”.

In comparison, English people do not have national tree, they have national plants. For example, there is a symbolic meaning of Shamrock: a sheet of white clover is a symbol of Ireland, its legendary image is associated with the Patron Saint Patrick, who explained the concept of the Unity of the Holy Trinity. The origin of the English idiom "to be (live) in clover" meaning ‘careless life in comfort and wealth’ is associated with the fact that the cattle grazing in clover meadows puts on weight quickly and feels great.

Another really popular idiom in England “to buy a pig in a poke” dates back to medieval times when pigs were bought at fairs. As a rule, sellers kept their piglets in bags. It was comfortable to carry the purchase home in a bag. But some dishonest merchants used to quietly substitute a pig for a large cat, of approximately corresponding size (which was not worth neither in the sense of value nor of meat). The calculation was that the buyer would not open the bag before coming home. We have a similar idiom, but in Russian we do not have “a pig”, we have “a cat” (“to buy a cat in a sack”).

“A white crow” is an example of Russian idiom which means ‘not like everybody else’. In this case English say “Rara Avis”. The expression is directly borrowed from the Latin language, namely, from the words "Rara avis in terries, nigroque simillima cycno” ("Satire", VI, 165-170, 82-year BC) that belong to the Roman writer Yuvenal ("a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan"). He also called «Rare bird» a perfect wife. Today there are some negative or ironic nuances in the characteristics of the «Rare bird» like in Russian terms «a strange bird». The reason is that the satirist Yuvenal believed having a perfect wife is not worth because perfection is impossible to bear, as the following example shows:

Núllane dé tantís gregibús tibi dígna vidétur? Sít formósa decéns, divés fecúnda, vetústos Pórticibús dispónat avós, intáctior ómni Crínibus éffusís bellúm diriménte Sabína, Rár(a) avis ín terrís nigróque simíllima cýcno: Quís feret úxorém cui cónstant ómnia? ***Ты из такой-то толпы ни одной не находишь достойной? Пусть и красива она и стройна, плодовита, богата, С ликами предков по портикам, и целомудрием спорит С девой сабинской, что бой прекращает, власы распустивши Словом, редчайшая птица земли, как черная лебедь, - Вынесешь разве жену, у которой все совершенства?

(Перевод Д. Недовича и Ф. Петровского)

The given examples prove the fact that English and Russian languages have a lot of differences in phraseology. But they also have some similar or equivalent phraseological units such as “to take oneself in one’s hands”. There are also idioms which are the same in meaning but different in use. For example, Russian people say “as like as two drops of water” while you can hear in England “as like as two peas in a pod”. The meaning of these idioms are almost exactly alike: ‘closely similar, like twins’.

To sum up, it is very important for those who are learning a foreign language to study idioms and other phraseological units, as they give a chance to understand the culture of speaking language more deeply. Good knowledge of words is not enough to see the ulterior meaning of such great and strong expressions as idioms; they must be studied from a linguistic and cultural point of view. Phraseological units reflect cultural stereotypes of a particular community and help make explicit the national-cultural peculiarities of its world perception.

To accomplish this, this paper compared idioms of two languages: English and Russian, demonstrating a variety of idioms, as well as how difficult they can be to understand. A deeper understanding of such relations between phraseological expressions across languages is important for various tasks such as language learning, translation, etc.

V. H. Collins writes in his Book of English Idioms: "In standard spoken and written English today idiom is an established and essential element that, used with care, ornaments and enriches the language" [5]. And as phraseology is one of the brightest and effective instruments in any language, the use of idioms can help avoid being dry or faceless in the moment of speech. It really makes our language poetic and solemn in some ways, but simple and precise in other ways.

References

1. Garry, J. &Rubino, C. Facts about the World's languages. H.W. Wilson. 2001. 761p.

2. Ginzburg R. A Course in Modern English Lexicology/ Ginzburg R. S., Khidekel S. S„ Knyazeva G. Y.. Sankin A. A. Moscow. 1979. 269p.

3. Телия В.Н. Русская фразеология. Москва, 1996. – 288с.

4. Alex Jude. English heart and Russian soul// English in Russia. 2012.

[Электронный ресурс] http://www.englishinrussia.ru/en/blog/language/english-heart-and-russian-soul

1. Collins V. H. A Book of English Idioms With Explanations. Ldn., 1958.

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