THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPEAN CULTURE ON LINGUISTIC PICTURE OF THE WORLD OF SERBIAN, FRENCH AND ITALIAN PEOPLE (EXEMPLIFIED BY IDIOMS WITH CULINARY COMPONENT)

Abstract

In this paper we analyse Serbian, French and Italian idioms comprising the culinary terminology as their component (lexemes that denote groceries (e.g. apple, egg), certain types of meals (e.g. goulash), meat products (e.g. sausage) and other culinary products (e.g. bread)). The aim is to observe the influence of the European culture on phraseological meaning as well as to determine the lexical and semantic similarities and differences of the chosen idioms by using comparative-contrastive analysis. We classified the idioms into four groups according to their origin: 1) idioms of biblical origin, 2) idioms rooted in mythology, legends and anecdotes, 3) idioms originating from fables and 4) idioms of uncertain origin. We noticed that, despite the different national cultures and different language groups (French and Italian are Romance languages, while Serbian is Slavic language), the majority of the chosen idioms that were influenced by European culture are lexical and semantic equivalents in the three languages, which indicates the similar metaphorical manner of thinking of the three nations. However, the results of our research also show that certain idioms can be found in just one or two languages due to the influence of different historical and sociolinguistic factors on the observed languages. Additionally, some of the idioms are semantic, but not lexical equivalents.