In his article Bemused in America Part 5: Language, Stefan Schirmer addresses the problems that American idioms cause for foreigners. Schrimer, a native German speaker, finds it strange that we have so many different ways to say the same thing and so many words with multiple meanings. He uses the phrase "passed away" as an example. When he first encountered the phrase, he knew the meaning of pass and the meaning of away and took the phrase to mean something along the lines of "gone out to lunch" when of course it meant someone had died. As a native English speaker, I can see how our language may be strange and even frustrating to foreigners. Schrimer is probably used to a word having a meaning and only one meaning, and that word is probably the only word with that meaning. So of course our culture would seem strange to him, what sort of crazy culture would create such a confusingly complex language? Why would we make things more difficult than they need to be? I would imagine Schrimer asks himself these questions all the time.
This article relates the the American value of self-expression. One reason the English language has so many words is so that we can better express ourselves. If someone says they feel "happy" then we have a general idea of there emotion. However is someone was to say they are "effervescent", then they have more specifically expressed their emotion and we can better understand them.
Well done...and a great look at our American vocabulary.
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