Who taught: Andrew and Ari

Today, I invited Andrew and Ari to my place. They had “authentic” Korean ramen noodle and Kimchi dumplings. It was really nice time. I really enjoy haning out with good friends. In our conversation, there was a time that we were talking about how women can change after having a baby. For example, breast-feeding in public places. In that context, Andrew said, “no more butterflies in the stomach!” Now we started talking about some other similar ones where we can find animals in it.

1. butterflies in the stomach : You can use this exprssion when you are nervous. For example, you have a big presentation to make in front of a lot of people, you can say “I have butterflies in my stomach.” If you are not nervous, then well… You are lucky!

I found very interesting reason why the expression is used from the wikipedia.

Some believe that this is caused by the release of adrenaline when one is nervous, pulling blood away from the stomach and sending it to the muscles. This reduced blood flow, in turn, causes the stomach to temporarily shut down, and possibly the reason for reduced appetite during love sickness.

I think it is very brilliant! Whoever made up this expression for the firt time, he is awesome. Using butterflies for describing the feeling of the blood flow is great. He must have thought about butterflies flying in your stomach, I think.

2. frog in my throat : If you have something in your throat like phlegm so that your voice is strange temporarily, you can use this expression. “I have got frog in my thorat!” I looked up the origin of this expression. And it seems like this is really American expression. Someone claims that he has not been able to find this expression used in any other English speaking countries. This expression is unique from the previous one in a sense that this is based on the sound of frog whereas the butterflies one is related with feeling.

The one thing I would like to mention is that you should know the difference between this expression and “sore throat” Sore throat is basically a type of symtom caused by inflammation of the throat. So basically, you are sick in your throat when you have sore throat.

3. cat got your tongue : This one makes me picture a drawing in my mind. Really a cat catches my tougue. Man, that will really make me impossible to speak. So, as you can guess, this is the expression you can use when someone is not speaking. I found a very interesting story from the Internet. It says this expresion is originated from a children book.

“What is wrong? Cat’s got your tongue?”

I do remember we have an expession with the same meaning with this one in Korean. 꿀 먹은 벙어리! (Ggul-muk-un-bung-u-ri!) Hmm, how should I translate this one in English??? I would say, “you’ve got honey in your mouth!” So, the origin of this expression! I think it is not because honey is sticky. In the old times, honey was one of the expensive things in Korea. So, if you eat honey by stealing from others, you do not want to speak because if you speak people would know that you had honey. Funny, isn’t it?

4. clam up : This is also almost similar expression to “Cat got your tongue!” Think about clam which closed its mouth! You will not be able to open it up. Jessica told me she heard this expression from the TV show, Friends. There is a scene where Monica, Chandler and Phebee are talking about bad thing of Rachel. And suddenly, Rachel gets into the room and Phebee wants to continue to talk about Rachel but Monica and Chandler do not even want to talk about the things any more. At that moment, Phebee says “Now, you guys clam up!” I like this expression! Short and really perfert descriptions of people’s behavior!

I guess there must be a lot more expressions with animals in it. Could you guys teach me more?

Who taught: Jean

A week ago, Jean pinged me, saying “Do you know ‘pulling your leg’?” As soon as I heard the expression, my first interpretation was “I am out of this!” My example would be like “I do not think this is a good idea. I am pulling my leg here.” The reason why I thought that way is because of the expression of “put my foot in something!” It means you are really good at something. So, for example, since I have gone through two years and two months of the Korean Army time, I became to be pretty good at cooking Korean noodle. My friends who eat Korean noodle I cooked would say to me, “Terry! man, this noodle is awesome. You really put your foot in it!” Don’t you think so, my friends?

But, as it usually is the case, I was wrong. Jean gave me the context she was in when she used the “pull your leg” expression. She said, “I said to Ari that when she’s gone to have her baby, I was going to keep the window open all the time!” And, Ari told Jean, “I am sorry! I just do not like too bright.” And Jean told Ari, “It’s all right! I am just pulling your leg!” It turns out the expression is the same one to “I am joking or kidding!” So, I asked Jean about the reason why that expression is equivalent to “I am kidding!” She told me that it is because when you pull other person’s leg, it is totally intentional and when you joke, it is something you intend to say in that way.

Again, interesting mixture of words to make a total different meaning. What if I say, “I am just pushing your leg!” Would that be the same meaning?

Who taught: Andrew

This afternoon, Andrew pinged me, saying “fall off a log”

I said “it sounds like painful! Does it mean something hard?” Well, it turns out that this expression can be used when you describe something very easy.

For example, “To me, rock climbing is as easy as falling off a log.” Well, I fall off the wall a lot when I rock climb. It makes sense, I guess.

But then, after work, I went to Harris Grill cafe to meet my friends and there I met Andrew and Beth with their friends. We were all surprised and they actually were in the middle of talking about my blog and me. They asked me, “What did you learn today?” So, I told them, “falling off a log!” Funny thing is almost all of them did not know what it means. WTH! Andrew, do you teach me the expressions no one uses at all.

I think I need to consider changing my main teacher.

By the way, there is also an expression in Korean which is exactly the same meaning. ??? ??? (nu-weo-seo dduk-meok-ki). If I translate this in English, hmm…. “Eating rice cake, lying on my back!” Now, it makes me think about the origination of the Korean expression. Why?? hmm.. I need to research more. Interesting!! I, as Korean, do not know why we use it. 

Who taught: Kara, Julie and James

These days, the coding competition, we call it IO days, is a big thing in my company. Maximum 4 people become one team and code really crazy for about 3 and half days and come up with the innovative feature that can bring a lot of benefits to our customers. The winning team gets a pretty big prize. My team members are Julie, Kara, James and me. Our team name is IO_Candy. Haha, IO_Candy FTW. Yay!

Anyway, today, we had our second team meeting for brainstorming our great ideas. In the middle of the meeting, Kara used this expression, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free!” When I first heard it, I thought it means literally why would you want to invest your money on something if you can get the major product from it for free. So, I told them, “Well you can still eat the cow!” And…..they laughed. James answered me, “But then you have to kill the cow!” We laughed again. Julie told me it actually means like “why would you want to get married, when you can get all the benefits of marriage without getting married!” I will let you imagine about the benefits of marriage here. I think the benefit here is the only one. But I do think there are a lot more benefits and happiness of marriage. So, I wanna say, “You do not know about the benefits of marriage until you really get married! But there are also disadvantages of marriage. So, I hope you make a wise decision and be happy with it! YMMV!”  (Andrew, how is my usage of “YMMV” here?? Good?)

I am still not sure we can use the expression to describe the situation like what I originally thought. Maybe not??? This is kind of expression that you do not really want to use if you do not know the real meaning of it. It would be really awkward if you use it wrong.

Who taught: Andrew

The other day, at the climbing wall, Andrew and I was working on one of the hardest ones. 🙂 When I almost got to the final piece of the climbing, he told me, “Stick a for in it!” I had to say, “What? what does it mean?” He told me this is something I can use when something is done or to be done. But then, I asked a question, “Why did you use it? Is it something related with cooking?” From that moment, many of my American friends over there started a discussion about its origin. “Is it because people used it when they check whether the potatoes are fully cooked or not.?” Then, I told my friends, “Yeah, that makes sense because you guys eat potatoes all the time, right?”

Then, there was also the other opinion, “No, maybe it is because we used to put fork into meat to check whether it is cooked properly or not.” Regarding that opinion, there was also a disagreement. “Aren’t we use like knife or something to check meat?” Well, we did not get the answer. But I am still curious. My guess is that it is because of potatoes. Do you have any thoughts on this?

I think there are so many expressions used by Americans without thinking about the origin or the reason. It totally makes sense because I would be the same if I speak Korean. I maybe the one who makes my friends think about those things because I ask bunch of questions, usually “why?” I feel like I am going through American childhood time.

Oh, funny thing is you can also use this expression for people, like “stick a fork in him!” But, I am confused about the meaning if I use the expression for people. Is it something I can use when someone fights against someone else and one person is winning and ready to hit the final punch, then we can use the expression?? Any good examples you have? Sigh… So hard. English is hard.

But if anything is easy, no fun of doing it! So I like learning English, especially from good friends. Thanks for bearing with me, my friends!