Apart from the regular – utilitarian – aspect of languages… there are very charming aspects… and you find them in expressions.
It’s another reason why I do love languages.
The drawback is that, most of the time, they are plain and simple untranslatable from one language to the other.
Natives don’t even pay attention to them because they grew up soaking in them… but when you are learning, like now… you do have to LEARN them, that is if you understand them, to start with 😉
I’ll take an exemple :
“It”s raining cats and dogs.” Really ? I’ve tried to retrieve the origins of this expression and… well, I’m not fully convinced (you can Google it if you wish).
In French, we would say : “Il pleut des cordes.” It’s raining ropes. Funny, hey ? But visually, when you can’t see drops anymore but literally rain flowing like from an open tap… it can look like “ropes.”
Count on me to find many of them, they will be included in the Idioms & Expressions of the Dare Speak French program… for the fun aspect and because even if you might not use them, you will probably hear them now and then !