Who taught: Shawn

Hello, there! OK, let me guess! You just got to the office and turned your computer on. And the first thing you do is open your web browser and type “http://englishfromfriends.com”, right? Nice job! You curiosity about a new article makes you do it, right? Now you are addicted to my blog!! Oh, by the way, as an applications engineer, I want to ask you one simple thing. If you are using IE 6, now close the browser and please upgrade it or install the firefox and come back to my blog.

Today, I would like to talk about how interesting an expression or phrase is created and people use and understand them in English. For example, “pick your brain!” The three words are combined together and becomes to have totally new meaning. This is really interesting. If I hear the expression for the first time, I would never understand what it means because literally it is like, “What? are you gonna drop my brain somewhere and pick it up later? What are you smoking crack?” The funniest part is when I or any other non-native English speakers try to use it in a wrong way, then it could sound totally crazy and stupid. For example, one of my friends in my company has a meeting with a client and one of the participants from the client side who is not an American used the following sentence. “Phil, I would like to eat your head on Monday.” It turns out that he was trying to use “pick your brain” but he used “eat your head” instead. I guess “eat your head” would have no special meaning and American people would possibly understand it literally. I mean like really somebody eats other person’s head. Pretty crazy and creepy, huh!

So, to me, it is really interesting and fun to learn the new slangs or phrases because it makes me think how languages are different.

“Pick you brain” means like “I want to learn from you.” By the way, does “eat your head” have any special meaning?