One of the most fun parts of learning a new language is learning the expressions and idioms that native speakers use, but that can sound like nonsense when you first learn the language. An idiom is a phrase that’s used to show an idea or an example, using words that often don’t seem like they fit.
Last week, I was at a picnic, and I was watching my friends playing volleyball. They were having a hard time, because there were so many people on each team. Each person thought, “The person next to me will hit the ball,” but because everyone thought that, no one actually hit the ball! In this situation, you could use the idiom ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth.’ It actually has nothing to do with cooking, but it means that too many people are trying to do the same thing at the same time and it won’t work very well because of that.
Another common idiom you might hear is ‘Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.’ People often use this one when someone is planning on something good but they don’t know if it will actually happen yet. Maybe your friend says, “If I get this new job, I’ll be able to go on vacation to California! I think I’ll visit the Golden Gate Bridge, and the beach of course!” You might say to them, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, you haven’t actually got the job yet! Maybe you should wait for that before making vacation plans.”
Have you ever heard someone say they’re feeling ‘under the weather’? It sounds strange, because the weather is in the sky, so wouldn’t everyone be under it? Well, it actually means the person is feeling a little sick or otherwise unwell. It can be quite strange when an expression actually has a completely different meaning to what you’d guess!
Some of them, however, mean exactly what you’d guess! ‘Pie in the sky’ and ‘when pigs fly’ can both be used to describe something that’s impossible or unrealistic. “People will be able to travel to other stars and solar systems in our lifetimes!” “Come on, that’s pie in the sky! It’s not possible. It’ll happen when pigs fly!”
Hopefully you’ve never told someone a secret they weren’t supposed to know, but if you did, you ‘spilled the beans’. You also ‘let the cat out of the bag’, since those two mean the same thing.
One of the most surprising expressions when you first hear it is ‘break a leg!’ This is not a threat, or even a dislike of the person you say it to. It’s actually a strange way of saying ‘good luck!’ This one has a controversial origin story, as there are several possible explanations and no one’s sure which is true. One theory is that people used to believe saying ‘good luck’ was unlucky (isn’t that crazy!), so they wished misfortune on the person instead to bring good luck. Alternatively, some people say that in Ancient Greece, people would bang their chair legs after a good performance as a kind of applause. The most likely explanation is that it came from a German-Yiddish pun, where the German phrase meaning ‘break a leg’ sounds a lot like the Yiddish phrase meaning ‘success and blessings.’ Wherever you think it came from, just remember that when someone says this, they are hoping things go well for you!
Idioms can be really fun to learn, and there are hundreds I haven’t mentioned here. Why don’t you do a little research and find your favourites?