Idioms. I love them. But, they often confuse me. Maybe that is why I notice them and grow to admire them. Maybe because I have to make an effort to understand them, I like them more. If it comes easy, we don’t appreciate it, right?
I am not a native speaker of English. But, I’ve lived in English-speaking-land all my life. How can that be? My foreign-born parents prefer their native tongue to our adopted one. At school, I interact with my school mates in English. I watch TV in English. I speak English with my siblings. But, those sayings that many take for granted some times come up and ‘stick out like a sore thumb’.
It was only recently that someone (born in Germany, but raised in USA interestingly enough) explained what it means for someone to be ‘a pill’. I’m so glad that in the last 20 years the internet has really taken off and now I can go to it to find a translation for those words that mean more than the sum of their parts.
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