【跟外教學地道英語】手指交叉是什麼意思？

Alison老師來自美國，現在在上海復旦大學攻讀學業。Alison很高興能成爲的英語老師，也歡迎各位滬友同她做朋友！目前她專門開設了一個外教課堂小組，幫助大家學習最地道的英語！戳我去看Alison的主頁>>

今天我們要跟着Alison老師學習一個好用的短語，首先來聽Alison老師的朗讀示範：

Phrase: I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Sentence: I don't know if I'll get the job, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

根據上面的句子，大家能否猜出其中的keep my fingers crossed是什麼意思呢？不能嗎？那我們再來看看Alison老師是怎麼想到這個詞兒的吧：

I had an interesting conversation with my Chinese roommate. She was talking about her upcoming exam, and she was very confused when I said "well I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!"
某天我和我的中國室友進行了一次有趣的交談，她正說起即將到來的考試，卻被我的一句"well I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!"給搞迷糊了。

I realized that "keep my fingers crossed" does not translate well! So this part includes a phrase that is useful to know and impressive to use.
我這才發現"keep my fingers crossed"這個短語不容易譯好！所以本次我們就來講一講這個有用且動人的短語。

現在大家應該能猜到一點兒了吧。其實，keep my fingers crossed 的意思就是“祈禱好運”！

【常見問題總結】

1、應該用在哪些話題中？

"Keep my fingers crossed"是被用來描述具體的事件、你在某項具體任務中的表現、或者某一情況的具體結果。總之，我們不能泛泛而談。比如你說：“我要搬到新的城市去了，祈禱好運”，大家會搞不懂你在祈禱什麼；但是如果改成“我要搬到新的城市去了，希望能找到一所好公寓，祈禱好運”，這樣就對了。另外，這個短語不能用在死亡、重病或是其他跟生死有關的話題上。

2、表示"faith"（信念）還是"luck"（運氣）？

如果你對自己有信念faith，那意味着你相信自己有能力獲得成功；但是當你用"crossing my fingers"這個短語時，它代表你認爲自己也許有能力，但還需要一些運氣。所以"keep my fingers crossed"是一種祈禱好運的方式。

3、能否用於無法控制的事情？

這個短語也能用於自己所不能控制的事，比如祈禱明天能有好天氣，又如考試考完後祈禱自己能通過（因爲考完就不能再改變考試結果了嘛）。

大家都明白了嗎？今天就用起來吧！

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翻頁還有Alison老師的完整版講義音頻和文本喲>>

【完整版講義音頻】

Hello everyone, this is Alison from HJ English.
This Episode will be discussing your work on the phrase "keep my fingers crossed".

You had some great ideas, so I wanted to share some of the best examples. They include:
"I don't know if I'll get the scholarship, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed."
"I don't know if I'll find a good boyfriend, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed."
"We must keep our fingers crossed that the weather will stay nice for tomorrow."

First, let's talk about topics. "Keeping your fingers crossed" can be used when talking about specific events, your performance on a specific task, or a specific outcome of a situation. Basically, we keep our fingers crossed for very specific things. For example, it would be very confusing if I said "I'm moving to a new city, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed," because you don't know what I'm keeping my fingers crossed for. Instead, it makes sense to say, "I'm moving to a new city and keeping my fingers crossed that I can find a nice apartment".
Inappropriate topics, or things you should not use the phrase for, include things like death, serious illnesses and other "life-and-death" situations.

Many of you brought up an interesting question, and that is the difference between faith and luck.
Keeping your fingers crossed is a way of giving yourself good luck. However, luck is very different from faith in the West. Faith can either be about believing in God or believing in oneself. If you have faith in God, it means you believe he will answer your prayer. If you have faith in yourself, it means you believe you have the skills you need to succeed. When you use the phrase "crossing my fingers", it means that you may have the skills, but you believe you still need a little luck. So a person wanting a little luck has less confidence than someone who has faith in themselves. I hope that makes sense.

Finally, the sentence about crossing your fingers for nice weather tomorrow is a good example of how we can also cross our fingers for things that we can't control, like the weather. Another good example is the sentence:
"He did a lousy job in the college entrance exam and didn't know whether he would get admitted. But he'd been keeping his fingers crossed."
The person in the sentence already completed the exam, so now he has no control over his score.
So we can cross our fingers for things that we can control and things that we can't control.

I hope that gives you a better understanding of the phrase. Now see if you can use it today!