Do you enjoy hitting the books? It doesn't mean you enjoy beating your books with your hand. That may be reasonable if you don't understand something inside your books. Hitting the books just means that you are studying hard. You can learn a lot when you hit the books. Especially before exams, most students spend a lot of time hitting the books to get good grades.

    This is just one example of expressions that can't be understood by taking them apart (分开) word by word. Expressions like this are called idioms (习语). They are an important part of a culture's language. Languages and cultures are closely connected. One example of an idiom in the Chinese language is "dui niu tan qin", or "to play the lute (拨弦乐器) to a cow." 这意味着某人在说话或写作时不考虑其听众或读者。

    Let's get back to idioms that begin with the word "hit". There are many of them in English, but it's not that easy for you to understand.

    One common idiom you may hear in English is "hit the road". It means to leave or to go. You can say, "Hey, I need to hit the road. Can we talk about this another time?" Or simply, "It's time to hit the road." When you are tired and you want to go to bed, you can say, "I need to hit the hay (干草)." It means you want to go to sleep. That's because a bed was often a big bag with hay inside in the past.

    习语使你的语言生动而有趣。 Let's hit the road to learn some and try to use them.