Word of the Week - 3

This week's word is a noun that came up in one of my one-to-one classes and I thought it was an unusual sounding but fun word to learn.

GIBBERISH

Basically it means nonsense! When someone says or writes something that makes no sense at all, you can say that they are talking gibberish.

I was so nervous in the interview, that I forgot what I had planned to say and I just started talking gibberish!

It can also be used to describe language that is extremely technical or very obscure and therefore difficult to understand.

Are those Chinese characters? It all looks like gibberish to me!

(N.B. The 'G' in the word is pronounced as a 'j' sound!)

A 'famous' example of something that is complete gibberish in both Spanish and English is the Ketchup Song (Aserejé - Las Ketchup). What were those girls singing about? Although I must admit the song was very catchy!

National Idioms -1

I thought that this month we could look at some idiomatic phrases that are related to the countries or nationalities of the teams that are participating in the Euro Cup. Today we are going to look at idioms containing the word 'Dutch' which, if you remember from Saturday's entry, is the name given to the people from the Netherlands and their language.

The first expression is 'Dutch courage' Sometimes when people have to do something frightening, they like to have a strong alcoholic drink to steady their nerves and calm them down. The confidence that comes from having this drink is what is known as Dutch courage.

The second expression is 'double Dutch'. One of the Words of the Week a couple of months ago was 'gibberish' and this expression has a similar meaning. If somebody is talking nonsense and you cannot understand them, you can say that they are speaking double Dutch.

The final idiom is 'to go Dutch'. Traditionally, when a man and a woman went out for a meal together on a date, the man would usually pay for it. Nowadays, it is more common for people to share the bill equally. When you do this it is known as going Dutch.