luosteve的部落格

今天要和各位介紹一本很好用的英文學習書籍，對想要進一步講出道地的口語英文、看懂英文電影及電視影集的朋友，有很大的幫助喔！  

Ladies and Gentlemen, today I’m going to introduce a good and very useful English-learning book to you. This book is believed to benefit those aiming at uttering colloquial English as well as grasping it with ease when enjoying movies and TV series. 
 

在台灣，絕大多數學校裡的英文所教內容都是正式的用語及文法，除非是有些老師刻意補充，不然學生們所學到的英文無非都是一堆官腔、甚至讓老外聽到都會莞爾一笑的譴詞用字，實際上會學到很生活化口語的機會少之又少。但偏偏你看到阿逗仔們在聊天，或者觀賞電視影集或電影時，都會聽到有很多都是課本上沒有見過的特殊英語表達法，常常丈二金鋼摸不著頭緒。  

In Taiwan , official English usages and grammars are mainly focused in most schools. Unless supplemented intentionally by a few teachers, spoken and colloquial expressions can be rarely seen in classes. Generally, students like us in schools of Taiwan are trained to speak or write in a rather formal fashion that in many cases we tend to produce outputs sounding funny and awkward to native speakers. But, when we are listening to the conversations between two English native speakers, watching movies or TV programs, we may find out that special idioms and phrases we’ve never seen from textbooks are everywhere, thus making us feel they are all Greek. 
 

底下這本「口語字典」，含蓋了一千個老美日常生活最常用的片厘語，你會發現這些特殊英文表達法和我們在學校所學的什麼迪克森片語很不一樣，當中有不少你光從字句本身去推敲很難和實際意義拼湊在一起的用法，相當有意思和有趣。比如說：「Now you are cooking」、「You can buy it for a song」、「Your bike is such a killer」是啥意思嗎？它們都和烹飪、歌曲或者殺手一點關係都沒有，而意指「你現在做得很好」、「你可便宜買下它」、「你的機車真的有夠炫」的意思喔。  

The book, A Dictionary of Spoken English, below covers 1,000 commonly used English idioms and expressional phrases, different from the Dixon studied by a number of Taiwanese students, of which implying meanings oftentimes show surprising and interesting flavors. Let’s look at some of them for instance. Do you know what’s exactly meant by “Now you are cooking”, “You can buy it for a song”, and “Your bike is such a killer”? They actually have nothing to do with cooking, songs, or bikes as they literally are. Those three sentences stand for “You’ve done it very well”, “You can buy it at a low price”, and “Your bike is really cool”.

俺之前閒著無聊就拿出來K，真的對我之前出國留學、看電視電影，或甚至目前的工作都非常有幫助說。比如說我之前在工作時就碰到一些客人和我對話時用了一些特殊用語：  

I used to study this book whenever at leisure, and found it helped me a lot when I studied abroad, watched English movies or TV programs. It’s even very helpful for my current job, since the book has assisted me a great deal in making out some special expressions from native English speakers. Some in-flight conversational examples are shown below: 
 

1.     (供應飲料及小點心時 / While serving drinks and nuts)  

Pax: Execuse me, can you give me an apple juice, an orange juice, a soda water, and a Gin & Tonic?  

Steve: Sure, no problem.  

Pax: Wow Steve, you rock. 
 

2.     (因機件固障而導致嚴重延遲時 / Having serious delay due to a technical problem)  

Pax: You know what, your aircraft is such a lemon. This has happened to me a couple of times. 
 

3.     (下機期間 / During Disembarkation)  

Steve: Thank you sir. Have a wonderful stay in Hong Kong . 

Pax: Yeah, It’s time to bail. 
 

4.     (空中休息期間 / During In-Flight Rest Period)  

Steve: Execuse me Madamn, would you like to have some snacks?  

Pax: No thank you. I’m not interested in having a spare tire. 

 

還好有經過「口語字典」這本書的洗禮，不然真的不曉得YOU ROCK就是「你好棒、很讚」而非指"你是石頭"、LEMON是指「老舊、該淘汰的東西」而非指"檸檬"、BAIL即「離開、落跑」而非指"保釋金"、SPARE TIRE意指「肚子的游泳圈」而不是"備胎"的意思。

Without A Dictionary of Spoken English, I couldn’t have realized that YOU ROCK means “you are great or you are awesome” and not "you are a rock or stone"; LEMON means “things which are old and need to be thrown away” and not "just a lemon"; BAIL means “to leave or to get out of some place” and not "a sum of money which a person who has been accused of a crime pays to a law court so that they can be released until their trial"; SPARE TIRE means “the fat around your waist” and not "the real spare tire for your car". 
 

這本書真的超推的說，有機會可以去書局看看。  

 


經典傳訊 Classic Communications Co.
作者: 白安竹 (Andrew E. Bennett), 哈佛大學教育碩士

  說文解字  

Key Words  

1). to aim at：以…為目的  

2). to utter：說  

3). colloquial：口語的  

4). to grasp：了解、意會  

5). with ease：容易地 (= easily)  

6). to supplement：補充  

7). to tend to~：傾象於  

8). awkward：怪怪的、不自然的