Read Online I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World by Jag Bhalla - Free Book Online

slippery syntax forced us to pay more attention. Brain measurements, using EEG (electroencephalogram), have been able to demonstrate that these functional shifts are measurably more stimulating than just plain old semantic novelty. 4
    Davis also notes the “closeness of functional shift to metaphor” and goes on to describe it as “that characteristic mental conversion that Shakespeare so loved.” Some of Shakespeare’s functional shifts were highly compressed and therefore more potent metaphors; “spaniell’d me,” for example, is a highly compressed form of “followed at my heels like a spaniel.” That makes me wonder about the closeness of the relationship between metaphors and idioms and the shift they require.
    Neuro-linguists are using their new high-tech tools to look carefully into idiom processing and comprehension. A look at the titles of some recent papers reveals the state of the art:
     
    “Left but Not Right Temporal Involvement in Opaque Idiom Comprehension,” 2004.
     
    “Evidence of Bilateral Involvement in Idiom Comprehension, an fMRI Study,” 2007.
     
    “Idiom Comprehension: A Prefrontal Task?” 2008. 5
     
    Though the jury is still out on the specifics, it’s clear that idiom comprehension involves more of the brain than processing the equivalent purely literal phrase. And though I haven’t found any research specifically on functional shiftiness and idioms, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to draw an analogy between the two and in so doing perhaps partially explain the enduring popularity of idioms.
    Further phrenological findings show that, since written Chinese is pictographic rather than alphabetic, the Chinese use different parts of their brains to read. Maryanne Wolf reports on this in her fascinating book on the history of reading, Proust and the Squid . She also points out that reading is evolutionarily a very recent activity. And thus it’s highly unnatural. We have no neuro-biological systems that have evolved expressly to support the deciphering of the frozen outpourings of other minds. You are at this precise moment engaged in one of the miracles of brain plasticity—reading. Wolf also points out another remarkable aspect of reading, which she summarizes using Proust’s elegant prose: You and I are both engaged in “that fruitful miracle of communicating in the midst of solitude.” 6
    Getting back to more general anatomical astonishments—it’s not just the insides of Japanese midriffs that seem more important than ours. While for us navel gazing isn’t to be recommended, it seems watching Japanese navels could be much more useful and entertaining. The Japanese, when they regret something deeply, “gnaw on their own navels.” When sulking they “twist their navels.” But that’s the least of their navel talents—when indicating something is laughable, they accuse one another of “making tea with their navels.” A Yiddish speaker can insult you by telling you that “onions should grow in your navel.” In one part of South Africa a common greeting among Xhosa speakers consists in asking “where is your navel,” which is their way of asking where you are from. It refers to the practice of burying the placenta of a newborn at the doorway of its family’s house. Hindi has a similar idiom.
    Okay, enough navel gazing and on to other body parts…
    I swear I’m not pulling your leg or, as the Russians would say, “I’m not hanging noodles on your ears.” A similar protestation for a German would be to “let a bear loose on someone,” and for a Spaniard to “grab someone’s hair.” A Japanese who wanted to dupe someone would more specifically “pull the hair out of their nostrils.” Meanwhile, “hanging something from your nose” in Japan means to be vain. To dupe someone in Czech is, alarmingly, to “hang balls on his nose.” Curiously, a Yiddish speaker needs a hole in the head like she needs a “lung and liver on her nose.” Whereas