Idioms Place in Writing

Idioms Place in Writing - Dominic Brunaccioni

Idioms have always interested me as a person and as a writer. Their origins are mysterious, they have so much gravity to them, and each language has their own unique set of idioms. As a writer, though, I hesitate to say they fit well into writing, however interesting they are. I always consider putting idioms into my work, especially my newest play about The Christmas Truce in WW1, where I have--so far at the time of this writing--tried to lace my work with as much British history as I can.

One of my characters, Commander Wyrre, is the antagonist of the play. As an audience member, I heavily dislike seeing villains that are dumb and overplayed. Evil is just as well pursued as good, so I make sure my villains have owned prestige, power, and intelligence. Commander Wyrre is the type of person that beckons respect and an ear to listen to him. He is a commander, after all.

So, as a writer, I feel intelligence goes hand in hand with idioms, as idioms almost have some sort of aura of wisdom to them. The words themselves, however short, are seen as philosophical and prestigious--ironically, Commander Wyrre is also very short in height--but the speaker of the idiom, be it from 1914 or 2020, are also seen as wise for saying them. So it’s a tool I feel would work perfectly for my character, complex as he is.

But I subconsciously feel that there’s a stigma for idioms in writing. Sure, academic papers should never include any type of language that goes outside its necessary boundaries. But for other less rigid types of work, I think many frown about idioms appearing at all. Books and poems to a certain extent, but plays most of all.

I have no definitive idea as to why this exists, after all, I am not a professional playwright whatsoever and cannot speak on behalf of any writer except myself. A possible explanation I’ve come up with is that the way I’ve grown up around writing is influencing how I treat the view of my writing. I was taught that plays are expected to create ideas, not rehash ideas that everyone has heard before. We read Shakespeare for a reason. I agree with this, of course. One would have to be the most mundane and unoriginal writer ever to not believe this. So I believe that the stigma and hesitations I have is that I’m not being original enough, and/or creative enough, by using idioms in my writing.

Everyone knows many idioms by heart. Sure, they are intelligent and powerful sentences, but does my character saying an idiom either make my audience roll their eyes, or connect to my character on a more intellectual level? The implementation isn’t a problem, as many idioms work in almost any situation, especially those with problems needing to be solved, which is the basic foundation of any play. What is my problem is creativity versus uncreativity. I worry my audience would get bored and think I have nothing to say on my own end.

Of course, that isn’t the case with my current draft. Not trying to boast, I really do believe that it has some real promise of originality. But as a constant listener in speeches, debates, plays, movies, papers, and whatever else in between, I’ve learned a valuable lesson. A single sentence can ruin almost anything. It can ruin a whole paragraph, argument, section, stanza, or scene. A whole scene can also ruin a whole play, a play can produce a whole mob of disgruntled fans, and before you know it, a whole play has ruined your whole wallet.

However over-dramatic as that sounds, it can be true. Awkward or out of place sentences can force your audience out of the world you were attempting to siren them into, and once you lose them, it's twice as hard to get them back. If I’m watching a play and a prop clock falls off the wall, I’m going to be looking at that clock for the next 20 minutes, however boring it is. It hasn’t moved; it hasn’t done a single thing in the time span since it fell. But it doesn’t belong, and that’s all I need to focus on. Similarly, if I’m watching a play where a WW1 commander must confront a reality where war has overtaken his life but his soldiers refuse to follow his orders, it would be jarring to hear him say “All’s fair in love and war”.

The meaning of the idiom may be perfect, but the inclusion doesn’t work in my book. So perhaps by researching idioms and implementation of idioms in playwriting, I can personally improve myself as a writer, by learning how to be “creatively unoriginal”. How do you implement a phrase so commonly said by the public that it “wows” them. Is any such way possible?



If I feel this topic to be too bland or uninteresting for me to write, I may approach idioms in a different way. I am also interested in how idioms translate to and from different peoples. Do multilingual and cross cultural idioms exist? Do the multilingual idioms actually equal to each other when translated? Why are some idioms commonplace and others so restrictive to singular cultures? Whatever I choose, idioms will most likely be at the centerpoint. They exemplify the beauty of language, yet are rarely analyzed. Ancient words that are still so unknown. I feel like it's an amazing topic to break into. Can’t wait to write it!

Turkish Time!

Turkish Time! - Dominic Brunaccioni

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all feeling well. Personally, my life feels like its on repeat. I wake up, work out, text friends, play video games, go to bed, and repeat. Honestly, it’s a life that I’m grateful to have, though, because I could be sick and/or dying of a terrible virus instead.

In terms of what’s new for language, I’m progressing more with my Turkish. My Arabic is at a standstill because we apparently “went too fast” as compared to the other classes, so we are doing nothing new while the other Arabic classes play catch-up. So, for Turkish, I finally finalized how my schedule will work. If you have followed my quest to take Turkish, you will know that I will be taking it at Georgetown University next year, through American’s Consortium. 

Taking a look at the schedule I received yesterday, Turkish is six credits at Georgetown, compared to American’s five credit for a language, so I guess I’m getting more bang for my buck. What that actually means, though, is that its a demanding class. I have the class four days a week. Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I will be at Georgetown University from 9:30 am to 10:45 am. It sounds gross, and I share the same feeling that you may have, but Turkish is what I asked for, and if this is what I asked for, you better bet I’m dedicated to it.

Sure, I have my hesitations, but I planned my whole schedule around the class and made sure that my other classes balanced out the workload. So the schedule part has been done and isn’t as scary as I thought it would be. What is scary is what is in the course description, where the professor writes that “students will need to keep track of two fully dedicated interactive notebooks”. If you know anything about me, I dread interactive notebooks. Glue gets everywhere, I always forget about it, and stuff falls apart. And now I have to worry about two of them. Well, at least it gets my mind off of coronavirus!

Stay safe, and see you next week!

~ Dom

Dialect War

Dialect War - Dominic Brunaccioni




Hello everyone!




I hope you all are doing well, especially in times such as these. Personally, I’ve accepted that quarantine is going to last a while, and have been working on things to distract me in the meantime.

In terms of language, Arabic is now the language that I will be focusing on. While it is nowhere near a minority language, the Egyptian dialect that my tutor here in Connecticut teaches me is. Like I’ve said before, the formal Arabic I am learning at American is called لفُصحى, and is rarely spoken in modern Arab civilizations. While there are many Arabic dialects, مصري (Egyptian) is quite rare in speaking populations as compared to other dialects.

It is often looked down upon by other Arab nations, as told to me by some of my Middle Eastern/North African friends. The reason for this is because of the unique way it treats its alphabet. In Arabic dialects, not only does the pronunciation of certain words change (Like how we envision American English vs. British English), the alphabet and letters have distinct variations. For example, if you were to ask someone from Lebanon and another from Egypt to read out the letter “ج”, you would get two different answers. The Lebanese speaker would respond with “J”, and the Egyptian with “G”. Although it looks like the same letter, it has lead to drastically different words and phrases for each dialect.

When I’m with Salwa, she taught me Arabic with an Egyptian foundation. What surprised me is that whenever it came down to learning new vocabulary words, she would give me a French word. Her reasoning for this, she told me, was that due to the frequent colonization and transfer of language from France, and later Great Britain, most Egyptians substitute French for Egyptian quite commonly. This is another reason as to why the other Arab nations dislike the Egyptian dialect, as they see it to be unorganized and unoriginal; still a bright beacon of colonialism.



In terms of how this affects me, I’m very grateful to have Salwa as a resource and to know the Egyptian dialect. She has taught me out-of-the-box thinking in terms of language and is a resource I will continue to use even after I switch to Turkish next fall. I do wish that the other nations would relieve their hatred of the Egyptian dialect and focus on being more united as an Arab unit. Sure, while Egyptian is extremely different, it doesn’t mean its wrong. If anything, it’s unique, and I like it the way it is.

What to Do Now

What to Do Now - Dominic Brunaccioni



Good evening!




Since my last post, coronavirus had yet to destroy the rest of the semester as we know it, and so here we are. As far as I know, the Language Exchange Program (LEP) has been postponed to next semester. In other words, my aspirations of learning Indonesian have been put on hold until the start of next fall, if the school lets us go back. My trip to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco are up in the air, so learning Basque seems almost as fruitless as checking my local grocery store for toilet paper nowadays. So I have no Indonesian partner, and my trip to the Basque Country is now on life support. I am left without any clear idea as to what my logs will entail for the rest of the online semester.

There is one positive notion that I may share with you all. I am attempting to communicate with the Georgetown professor who is the head of the Turkish section in their language department so I can secure a spot in Beginner Turkish at Georgetown next academic year. Fingers crossed it all works out. I’ve been cleared by my first-year advisor, the SIS Peer Advising team, and the head of the language department at American. Hopefully, that is enough support for me to get into the class next year.

If there is any positive to the coronavirus, its that I’m back at home. That means being close to those I love and care for. One of those people is my old Arabic tutor that taught me a year of Arabic to prep me for my Freshmen year at AU. Being from Egypt, she has the Egyptian Arabic dialect, known as مصري. So I learned Arabic alongside a less used dialect. But upon my arrival at American, the Arabic program teaches Arabic using the formal and non-used dialect, with the letters from the Levantine dialect, known as الشامي. So I totally lost my مصري alphabet and pronunciation of words. Now that I’m back home, we have continued weekly meetings (On Facetime for the sake of social distancing) so I can ace my AU Arabic class, but also to reshape my مصري dialect.

So although everything seems lost, I look forward to a bright future. I hope everyone is healthy and are feeling mentally sound. Thank you for reading, I’ll see you online soon!




~ Dom

Missing Indonesian

Missing Indonesian - Dominic Brunaccioni

Good evening!

It is with a heavy heart that I report that Paskalis and I did not meet again this week. As it is midterm season, Paskalis needed the time to study. So I decided, with the time that I have, to extend the list of stuff when we get back to do. I created three more activities for synonyms. The first one is from the astrology poster I have in my room, even though I don’t believe in astrology too much myself, it was a good set of words. The second set is from my World Politics class about Gender Hierarchy and Joan de Arc. The third set is from my Lost in Translation full draft that was due today.

My goal is for Paskalis to easily begin to understand what words work for certain situations and when some don’t. Not all verbs in the exercises are synonyms, though. In fact, almost none of them are, as I want to do general word choice with him as well, but also to get the bigger synonym concepts more understood, instead of chucking nine words that all seem super similar. This will be for his benefit, of course.

Personally, I am nervous for when we come back. It seems like he has a lot prepared for me, a little too much. I haven’t even got the chance to memorize what was given two weeks ago, thanks to the enchanting atmosphere of mid-terms, which has really kicked my ass in terms of free time to study Indonesian/free time in general. Hopefully, when we get back, I will adapt to having more free time, and less time stressing/studying my heart out, in order to start comprehending Indonesian.

All I can do now is wait until after Spring Break. But the rumor going around campus that spring break may be extended will 100% affect our language experience, which saddens me. As I am close to being greenlighted for Turkish at Georgetown University next year, I will be focusing on that language more than any other.

See y’all after Spring Break!    

~ Dom

[Secretive, Gentle, Optimistic]

Born under the sign of the Bull, you have a _______ nature except when provoked. Then you become “mad as a bull.” But most of the time, you are loving, good-humored, and ________. You make a good public servant. Keeping this in mind though, you can be quite _______. The best colors for you are oranges and reds.

[Oppressed, Admirable, Honored, Weakness, Fantastic]

A ________ example of a woman breaking the cycle mentioned above was Joan de Arc. Not only did she break out of the _______ female mold of her era, she was seen as an ______ fighter, war hero, and an exemplar of the might of France. Going against what was common at the time, French men had no care that they were fighting alongside a woman--in fact, they were _______ to do so. While this “honor” would not be given to all French women until centuries later, Joan de Arc exemplifies a _______ in the gender hierarchy, the notion that the structure of traditionalism in male-dominated fields can and will be broken.

[Explore, Understand, Referring, Analyze, Surrounding, Ripping, Comprehend]

So if we are to _______ what the disputed conversations and academic history _________ the accent are really talking about, I think it would be best if we first ______ what some of the scholars define the Connecticut accent to be. Let us _______ the dialect before ______ it apart, piece-by-piece. _______ back to Santaniello’s piece, he generalizes a few aspects of the Connecticut accent before going into his rhetoric about the “multiple” different dialects--which is a bold claim we will ________ and likewise rip apart, later.

Geared Up for Next Time

Geared Up for Next Time - Dominic Brunaccioni

Good evening! 

As for how my Indonesian is going, Paskalis and I sadly did not meet this week, as I had way too much work to do. Well, that was my story until my Arabic teacher today pushed the dreaded test that I had been hardcore studying to the class next week, so I missed Wednesday’s lesson for nothing. I should be happy, but now I feel cheated out of a good session with Paskalis.

Regardless, we shared with each other what we have prepared for the next session. So I can, at the very least, let you have a glimpse of what my “English lessons” will entail for next week and vice-versa for what he will do with me.

Honestly, Paskalis is kicking some major butt for Indonesian. While I have not gotten close at all of fully memorizing the vocabulary he gave me last week, he has a lot of new vocabulary ready at the helm. We will be doing numbers (angka) next week, which is numbers one through twenty, as well as ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc) and has them going all the way from first to twentieth. That’s a lot! He also wants to start with basic grammar, passive and active transitive verbs, and standard versus non-standard Indonesian sentences. This much work makes me squirm, out of a place of both nervousness and enthusiasm. Hopefully, it won’t be too overbearing for me!

What I have for him is what he requested: Looking at what certain words go in certain sentences. He seemed to enjoy the exercise I made last time, so we are repeating the fill-in-the-blank activity, where he searches where certain words go in specific spots by looking at the contexts of the overall paragraph and each individual sentence. I stole three paragraphs from either previous papers of mine or random passages in my collection of literature in my dorm. Here’s an example of the last paragraph, which is the hardest one. It’s from my World Politics class, for a paper on Constructivism:

Complete the following paragraphs with the words given in each word bank:

[Glanced, Alliances, Controlled, Necessary, Protected, Continent, To be ready, Established]

Take for instance the _______ that the Ottoman Empire had with Europe throughout

history. When the Europeans found it _______ to fight with one another again, they often

_______ towards the Ottomans for help. Ottoman and Maltese historian Elena Augusti notes this

unstable relationship, as “Capitulations _______ their merchants, trade, contracts and cases; they

[Europeans] _______ in the strategic specific places of Mediterranean Western presence and

________, from a privileged inner position, their Muslim interlocutor” (Augusti 292). So if the

Ottomans were to join an alliance with a certain European power, they had ______ for their

“ally” to turn on them at any moment, and to be ready to immediately seek another alliance

elsewhere, in a _______ where there was no easy alliance to be found.

See y’all in class tomorrow, and have a great weekend!

~ Dom

Beginning Bahasa and Explaining English

Beginning Bahasa and Explaining English - Dominic Brunaccioni





It was week two of my language exchange with Paskalis, and I have to say that I’m super impressed with what he prepared for me. It was very formal and organized. We practiced a basic conversation:





“What’s your name?” [Siapa nama Anda?]





“My name is Dominic. What’s yours?” [Nama saya Dominic. Siapa nama Anda?]





“Mine is Paskalis”. [Nama saya Paskalis.]





“Where do you live?” [Di mana Anda tinggal?]





“I live in Maryland, and you?”[Saya tinggal di Maryland, dan Anda tinggal di mana?”





“I live in Connecticut” [Saya tinggal di Connecticut.]





You get the idea. I don’t want to bore you with the nitty-gritty stuff, but we practiced the pronunciation of those words together to form basic sentences. I also learned some vocab, with the theme being members of the family. He then gave me whole paragraphs of Indonesian text, and asked me to read it out. Although I had no idea what the heck I was saying, it was great for me to learn how to pronounce the language. I’m really happy with what I’ve been given, Paskalis really seems to know what he’s doing with the language, and although you may say “No duh, he’s from Indonesia!”, most Indonesians learn Indonesia as their second language, and really only use it in school. Their regional language is what they learn first, so Indonesian is a new language just as much as it was to Paskalis when he learned it years ago. So, in my book, he’s doing amazing.





Now, for the flip side, I prepared two exercises for Paskalis to better ace English and its many complexities. I went through some of my schoolwork and novels and pulled random sentences from them that had plural nouns and adjectives. I then purposefully changed them to the singular tense and asked Paskalis to read the sentence, understand the errors, and fix them. Hopefully, this will translate to his actual work routine in the future. The other aspect we worked on is synonyms, as Paskalis struggles with understanding as to what words to use in certain scenarios, and how they sound in a sentence when added. So I did the classic vocab quiz-esque exercise where I had Webster dictionary sentences of words, then deleting the word in the sentences, and making a word bank for a fill-in-the-blank. This was not easy for him, and I explained that while there are “wrong” and “right” answers about language, especially English, many parts of language are interchangeable. It’s just the practice and repetition of words in sentences that will help you understand which words go where at whichever time. See y’all next week!