Re: Opinions on English

On Sun, 17 Sep 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 17, 2000 at 06:53:01PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> [snip]
> > > 4) many compound verbs that convey little immediate
> > >     semantic value (e.g. to "put up with")
> >
> > Now *that's* something that puzzles me, and that I have a hard time
> > explaining to ESL grad students.  I usually tell them to memorize the
> > whole thing as a unit and not try to break it into components.
>
> That's because it's an idiom. If you break up "put up with", it has
> nothing to do with the meaning as a whole, because it's not a syntactic
> construction. I wouldn't call "put up with" a proper compound verb,
> because its semantic meaning is idiomatic and cannot be analysed in that
> way.
>
> Every language has its own idioms, so I don't see why this should be a
> reason to hate English...
I didn't say I hated it, just that it puzzled me.  Do many languages have
idioms composed of verb + prepositions that don't mean what you'd think
literally (if you can even figure out what it'd mean literally)?

Also, some idioms are more fun than others, like "once in a blue moon" or
"parler comme une vache espagnole."

YHL