常常有同学问“good on you ”什么时候开始代替“good for you”了?到底哪一个是正确的呢?真是让人头痛啊!几天小编就给大家好好讲讲“good on you”这个短语。
'Good on You' Comes from Australia
“Good on You”来自澳大利亚英语
The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang says good on you is an Australian phrase dating back to 1907. Anecdotally, two Australian commenters on the LinkedIn page said that good on you is the standard phrase in that country, but one Australian dissenter said that although good on you is common, it is still viewed as slang. [/en
]《新帕特里奇俚语词典》中写道,“good on you”是一个澳大利亚短语,可以追溯到1907年。据说,两位澳大利亚籍评论员在领英页面上称“good on you”在他们国家是标准用语,但是一位持反对意见的人则表示虽然“good on you”使用普遍,但仍然属于俚语。
[en]The Concise English Dictionary labels good on you "Australian colloquial."
《简明英语词典》将“good on you”标注为澳大利亚口语。
What Does 'Good on You' Mean?
“Good on You”是什么意思?
Anna Wierzbicka, of the Department of Linguistics at Australian National University, writes in Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations that the phrase good on you is a working-class expression and reflects Australians' deep seated optimism. She says that although good on you is often interchangeable with congratulations or good job, it also has a different meaning: you may say good on you to a friend who has announced he will fight a difficult illness, for example—a situation in which congratulations or well done would be inappropriate.
澳大利亚国立大学语言学部的安娜·维尔比卡在《语义,文化与认知:特殊文化格局中人类的普遍认知》一书中写道,“good on you”是工人阶级常用的表达,反映了澳大利亚人根深蒂固的乐观态度。她说尽管“good on you”可以和“congratulations”和“good job”互换,它还包含了其他意义:比如你的朋友宣布他将和病魔作斗争,你可以说“good on you”,但说“congratulations”和“good job”就不合适了。
She concludes:”Saying good on you, the speaker indicates that the addressee has displayed, in a conspicuous way, an attitude which the speaker assumes both she or he and the addressee admire. . . . in good on you, the stress is on people's potential, on what they can do, rather than on what they have done, and on the kind of person they have shown themselves to be.”
她总结道:“说‘good on you’时,说话人想表明听话人很明显地展示出了一种说话人和听话人都赞赏的态度……‘good on you’强调的是听话人的潜力,注重他们能做什么而不是已经做了什么,强调听话人已经展示出自己是某类人。”
Of course, good for you can be used the same way.
当然,“good for you”是同样的用法。
How Common Is 'Good on You'?
“good on you”有多普遍?
A Google Ngram search shows that good on you is used in both British and American books. The phrase begins its rise in popularity around 1960, and the scale shows that it is now more common in published American English than in published British English.
谷歌语言模型搜索表明英国和美国的书中都使用过“good on you”。1960年左右这个短语使用量开始增加,而且数据表明现在“good on you”更多的出现在美式书面语中,而不是英式书面语中。
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