主要讲文化背景对英语学习的影响,值得我们学习这一方面的知识
orks and have become common household terms. But without the knowledge of western culture and history, such allusions are not always easy to understand, and without understanding there can be little appreciation .For example:
a Herculean task—task requiring great power of body or mind. Hercules was a powerfully built hero of ancient Greek mythology. As punishment for a serious misdeed, he was ordered to do twelve virtually impossible tasks. Hercules succeeded in doing all and was rewarded with immortality. Example: It was a Herculean task, but he managed to do it.
David and Goliath (from Bible)—David was a shepherd boy; he killed the Philistine giant Goliath with a shot from his sling and later became king of the Hebrews; in metaphorical use, David and Goliath stand for a contest between two persons, enterprises, countries, etc., in which one is much smaller and/or weaker, but in which the smaller/weaker one wins out.
a Horatio Alger story—any ―success story‖, often considered a myth, of a poor boy who works hard and finally rises to the top, becoming rich, successful, famous; Horatio Alger was a writer whose stories generally had the same such plot. His best-known books are the Ragged Dick series and the Tattered Tom series.
Some of these allusions may be looked up in the dictionary, but with the continuous development of society and language, new allusions have appeared. Unless one is well acquainted with developments of a certain country, one would be at a loss about the meaning and connotations of terms or expressions such as those below:
a Rambo—Rambo is the character made famous by American movies around the mid-1980s. He is a tough soldier of the Vietnam War, resourceful, taciturn, lonely, somewhat ―odd‖. Rambo gets involved in numerous risky adventures or in one violent situation after another. He makes miraculous escapes from impossible situations by shooting, knifing, bombing or burning his way out. Unbelievable as his feats may seem, and repugnant as some of his violent actions may appear, he is the current hero of many American boys and young men.
a Pepsodent smile—A smile showing beautiful white teeth; from advertisements for Pepsodent tooth paste, one of the better-known brands in the USA.
Idiom is an important part of the language and culture of a society. They are often hard to understand and hard to use correctly. They are almost impossible to understand from the meanings of the individual words. And with English idioms, even the same words may have different meanings as in the examples blow:
So, first of all, a student should learn not to look down on such idioms just because they‘re made up of such simple and easy words. He should look out for identical phrases with different meanings and look them up in a dictionary if he‘s not sure. He‘s bound to run into a lot of trouble when he first uses them, but he shouldn‘t give in, much less give up. If he keeps trying and keeps at it long enough he‘ll make out and things will turn out well in the end.
Though the passage is short, it includes ten idioms: look down, made up of, look out for, look up, run into, give in, give up, keep at it, make out and turn out (well).