Have you ever noticed that those extremely inconspicuous and insignificant little things in life often hide the decisive and crucial factors that determine the direction of success or failure? The words and phrases expressed in English that we say casually and inadvertently have errors in translation may be secretly and unknowingly revealing the level of your actual existence.
The Chinglish we blurted out in those years
Some people directly say "I am so about my" instead of "I am very serious about your grades". This kind of mistake can be seen everywhere in the workplace and on campus. Last month, I interned in a foreign trade company. Colleague Xiao Wang wanted to express his importance to the project to his boss, but ended up saying "I am very serious about my work." Although there was no grammatical error, it always sounded stiff to foreign customers.
To be precise, the authentic expression should be "I take my work seriously" or "I am committed to my work". Language is not just a simple patchwork of words, but a manifestation of culture and ways of thinking. Last week, an international student shared that when he first arrived in the United States, he wanted to express "Don't laugh at others" and directly translated it into "Don't laugh at other". However, the result was that the other party could not understand it at all.
Phrasal verbs are the soul of English
The biggest headache for many Chinese students is phrasal verbs, such as "get off", "put off" and "turn down". In the past, on the subway, I heard a mother say to her child, "Quickly, you will be late." The MBTI personality test she used was "Quickly, you will be late." However, in fact, native English speakers more commonly say "Come on, or you will be late."
In the use of language, phrasal verbs are just like four-character idioms in Chinese, which have far-reaching meanings. When people take something and make it really right, it can give your verbal expression a natural and appropriate style in an instant. Just like there is a situation where the expression "You can't put off the meeting" is not "You can't delay the meeting", but to be precise, it should be "You can't put off the meeting". That's how it works. Within the scope of my knowledge and understanding, there is a very powerful person who achieved an excellent score of 8 in the IELTS test. He said that the most important trick he believed he had was that he spent dedicated time and energy to sort out exactly 200 commonly used phrasal verbs.
A preposition changes the meaning of an entire sentence
Have you ever thought about why "look down" means looking down, but "look down on" means contempt? Last week, my foreign teacher gave an example: "You can look down the whole city from the top of the mountain" and "Don't look down on others". The two only differ by a preposition, but their meanings are very different.
This subtle difference is exactly the kind of touchstone that can test your English proficiency. For example, "You must put away all your clothes" should be said as "You must put away all your clothes" instead of "put in". I have a friend who works in a foreign company. Because he couldn't understand the difference between "hand in" and "hand out", he made a joke in a particularly important meeting and said that receiving homework is sending out homework.
Even foreigners often use these verb collocations incorrectly
Does "turn on the TV" mean "open the TV" or "turn on the TV"? I asked my teacher about this question in my college English class, and the answer is actually the latter. Last year, I traveled to Singapore. In the hotel, I wanted to ask the front desk to help me turn on the air conditioner. At that time, I said "open the air-con", and the waiter was stunned for several seconds before he responded.
Similar expressions exist, such as "I have gained a lot of weight." In this case, it must not be said as "I have increased fat", but a feasible and authentic way of saying it is "I have put on some weight." Mastering these collocations is not achieved through rote memorization, but requires understanding the way of thinking in English. For example, "This book will be published next month" is expressed with "come out", which will appear more lifelike than "be published".
Context determines the life and death of a word
The same word has completely different meanings in different contexts. For example, "fall down" and "fall over" both mean falling, but the former refers more to falling from a high place, while the latter refers to accidentally stumbling on flat ground. It snowed in Beijing last week and the road surface was extremely slippery. An elderly man almost fell down. The people around him shouted "carefully slip". It would be a joke if it were translated as "carefully slip".
To say "I must find out the truth", you can say "I must find out the truth". However, there is a difference between "find out" and "work out". The former focuses on discovery, while the latter focuses on solving. My cousin suffered a loss when he was taking the postgraduate entrance examination . In a reading comprehension article, there was a sentence "work out the problem". He understood it as finding out the problem, but in fact it meant solving the problem.
There is no shortcut to learning English well, but there are methods
Many people ask how to avoid making these mistakes, and the answer is quite simple: listen more, read more, and accumulate more. I continued to watch American TV series and take notes every day, writing down sentences such as "Don't be in a hurry to talk back to your parents" and "You can't cut down these trees." After three months, my spoken English has become significantly fluent.
Practically speaking, learning English is like a puzzle, in which every phrasal verb and every combination with a fixed collocation is a piece. Once you have accumulated a sufficient number, you will be able to see a flawless picture; I got to know a retired teacher who was in his 60s and 70s. After organizing these frequent common phrases in a clear and coherent manner, he is now able to communicate freely with foreign tourists without any hindrance. He has also become a high-profile star in the English corner in the community.
Have you ever made a joke by using the wrong English words or phrases? Feel free to share your experience in the comment area. The friend with the most likes will receive the electronic version of "The 100 Most Misused English Phrases" compiled by me!
