Interpreting idioms in a second language

Abstract How do people understand figurative speech in a foreign language? What strategies they use? By means of an online questionnaire, this study investigated to what extent contextual information and transfer play role the interpretation idioms second language, controlling for familiarity. Sixty-one native speakers Dutch were asked guess correct English with without equivalent, presented context, out four answer options. The results showed that correctly interpreting idiom depends on both presence context possibility transfer. More interpretations given when was but only equivalent language. Dutch, often rated as familiar, mostly understood correctly. We interpret result involvement from