First Day of Class!

Mechanical pencil – check, mostly pristine notebook (somehow a number of different “to do” and shopping lists already invaded its pages) – check, lunchbox – ok I am way too old for that. I am ready for my first day of class.  I love language class and I am really excited to start. For months now, I’ve been keeping my fingers crossed that a space for me will materialize in the next Tamil class. On the other hand, the “to do” lists might’ve crept into the pristine notebook I’ve been saving for the occasion, because, let’s be honest, “space available” is not much to hang one’s hat on and I did not want to hope and rely on a space opening up in a language class too much. Nevertheless, I’m in a class and I start tomorrow! 

Speaking of things like “hanging one’s hat on (something),” “raining cats and dogs,” how are we supposed to understand idioms? I did not grow up speaking English. I immigrated to the US when I was nine. The combination of my age, natural linguistic ability (which in my case comes paired with its evil twin; language study laziness), and excellent hearing got me absolutely no accent in English. In fact, I do well with pronunciation in other languages as well.

I sound like I was born in the US; I can affect a slight British accent, a pretty authentic Brooklyn accent, sometimes a light Boston accent and oh yes, while living in Israel, I did a pretty authentic Russian accent in Hebrew. The Russian accented Hebrew requires a quick digression. Anyone American that has travelled abroad knows that an American accent usually translates into “wealthy American” in most languages. Since when I lived in Israel, I was living off my savings from a former NGO job and tutored an American diplomat in Russian for an hour once a week which got me 70 shekels (20 USD), I did not want to sound American = wealthy. Therefore, I affected a Russian accent while speaking Hebrew, and in Israel a Russian accent usually translates into; new immigrant, not so wealthy.

However, I’ve never stopped wondering about idioms and how the hell did they enter speech? “Raining cats and dogs” how does that even make sense? In Russian you have an equivalent to “raining buckets,” but in Russian you say roughly “raining out a bucket.” In Hebrew you have what translates to “waste of time,” if you had to guess you would say this might be a bad thing, right? Actually, you say “haval ala zman” (waste of time) after you spent time doing something great. This makes no sense, just like a heavy downpour described as “raining cats and dogs.” As a language nerd, idioms have always held a special place in my heart. I hope to add to my collection very soon.