Media: LATimes: Body Part Idioms
| Submitter: |
Karen Chung
|
| Submitter Email: | karchung@ntu.edu.tw |
| Linguistic Field(s): |
Language Documentation Pragmatics Semantics Lexicography |
| Media Body: |
She Has It in Her Head to Clarify Sayings By J. Michael Kennedy, Times Staff Writer After all those years of slinging hash and refilling coffee mugs, May Pare found herself up to her eyeballs in a collection of sayings that would blow the mind of someone trying to learn English. She had hundreds of these sayings, many of them overheard and scribbled down while she was waiting tables at Shakers restaurant in Glendale, where she's worked on and off — but mostly on — for the last 30 years. The result of her work is a self-published 363-page book that deals exclusively with body part idioms, in chapters ranging from butt to breath and head to toes. ... The book, 'Body Idioms and More,' is designed to help foreign-born students who would otherwise throw up their hands in dismay at the odd sayings, some of which give no clue to their real meaning. ... Pare (pronounced Paray) is a scholar of the English language, her specialty both as a student and as a college teacher in her native Thailand. Later, she earned her master's degree from UCLA, with a specialty in English as a second language. Linguist Anthony Aristar said it doesn't surprise him that Pare has come up with so many idioms that deal only with body parts. 'English has a huge vocabulary, much more than most languages,' said Aristar, who manages the Linguist List website, which has more than 21,000 subscribers. 'One thing it loves to do is borrow. English grammar is so simple you can insert all sorts of things into it.' Aristar said he would not be surprised if most of Pare's idioms are found in other such collections, but singling out body parts makes her work unusual. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-idioms1jan01,0,6697349.story?page=1&track=tothtml Free registration required to access article. Karen Steffen Chung http://ccms.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/ http://lists.topica.com/lists/phonetics/ |
| Issue Number: | 17.199 |
| Date Posted: | January 20, 2006 |
