Because I Said So

This week Noted Abroad turns off the television. Our friend John B. once pointed out that all you have to do is turn the thing off, and as a matter of course, unless you want to pass the rest of the day loafed on the couch staring blankly at nothing, you will find something else to do, perhaps something more rewarding and/or enlightening to do. If you really do want to pass the rest of the day loafed on the couch staring blankly at nothing, you’d just as well leave the television on, so as to at least feel like you are actually engaged in some activity, i.e. actually conscious. But noted abroad is going to give Spanish TV a rest for now, and rather happily turn back to linguistic affairs.

As an ESL instructor abroad, you learn a great deal about English even as you teach it. On the one hand, you have to. You may know what works and doesn’t work when you see it, but to teach the language you will need to be able to explain why what works, works, and why what doesn’t work, doesn’t work. You will need to go way back to the diagramming of sentences, the memorizing of irregular verb forms, and other joys of grammar school. Past participles, modals, relative clauses, phrasal verbs…an ESL instructor has to know what these things are, what they can do and what they can’t do. Brushing up on the rules and regs of English, the aspiring ESL instructor may come to the unfortunate conclusion that English has as many exceptions as rules. This means that the ESL instructor will need to find a polite but firm way to communicate the expression “because I said so” to his or her ESL students.

In an earlier installment we learned how funky English spelling can be (to/too/two, through/rough/dough; teaching English spelling involves much because-I-said-so). Now let’s look at some funky idiomatic expressions in English, which funky idiomatic expressions a visiting ESL instructor might not recognize as funky until an ESL student expresses confusion.

The car doesn’t run.

With this, students often wonder if they are incorrectly translating the word “car” or the word “run.” Outside of the Flintstones, since when can an automobile run? If the car in question does not run, does it at least walk?

The radio won’t work.

If cars can sprout legs and go for a jog in the world of English, then maybe radios can have careers. When a radio won’t work, you have to wonder: Is the radio tired, ill, or just plain lazy?

Hey, it’s lunchtime. Yeah? I feel like a cheeseburger.

In paradise, maybe? What is it like to feel like a cheeseburger? Do you feel smothered? Cheesy? Stuck in the middle? Does it seem like you’re always getting grilled?

Will you please turn off the television?

This one harks back to the days when TV sets actually had knobs (to turn). Likewise the expression “flipping channels.” Incidentally, Spaniards use the word zapping (in English) to denote flipping channels. Dorky as the word zapping may sound, these days it is more accurate than flipping.

How are you? I’m good.

A student of mine who teaches philosophy says we should properly define “good” and “evil” before we allow people to go about casually sainting themselves in this way. We will need to get in a Platonic frame of mind, she says, and pretend like Nietzsche never happened. However we end up defining it, a person would have to be awfully presumptuous to call himself good, don’t you think? Meaning there are gazillions of awfully presumptuous people out there. But we already knew that.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.