Idioms, part 1

When I was talking to Zheng last night, he mentioned that he was feeling a little pudgy and that he was "growing some weight." I giggled and explained that we say "gain some weight."

How someone uses idiomatic phrases, or prepositions, is often a true mark of how fluent he or she is in a language. Each language has its hurdles. Italian prepositions are very difficult. English isn't much better. German has adjective endings which still boggle my mind, ten years after initially studying the language (and I'm continuing to work on these). I have no idea how this works in Mandarin, but I know I'm about to find out.

This is now "down time" in the semester. I have more time to visit family, friends, and now the young children of these people. It has been fascinating to see how kids pick up language, or how quickly parents can "understand" their kids even if the kids can't say anything intelligible. I've heard "I want nie," "wainie wainie ottawo" in the past few days. The parents of these children perfectly understood them.

The essence of language, and the function of the human voice, is to communicate. Here's to all of us who are students and practitioners of language.

Photo: from Dresden, summer of 2013. The swan supervises the ducklings' speech.