【跟外教学地道英语】手指交叉是什么意思？

Alison老师来自美国，现在在上海复旦大学攻读学业。Alison很高兴能成为的英语老师，也欢迎各位沪友同她做朋友！目前她专门开设了一个外教课堂小组，帮助大家学习最地道的英语！戳我去看Alison的主页>>

今天我们要跟着Alison老师学习一个好用的短语，首先来听Alison老师的朗读示范：

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!

根据上面的句子，大家能否猜出其中的keep my fingers crossed是什么意思呢？不能吗？那我们再来看看Alison老师是怎么想到这个词儿的吧：

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!"
某天我和我的中国室友进行了一次有趣的交谈，她正说起即将到来的考试，却被我的一句"well I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!"给搞迷糊了。

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.
我这才发现"keep my fingers crossed"这个短语不容易译好！所以本次我们就来讲一讲这个有用且动人的短语。

现在大家应该能猜到一点儿了吧。其实，keep my fingers crossed 的意思就是“祈祷好运”！

【常见问题总结】

1、应该用在哪些话题中？

"Keep my fingers crossed"是被用来描述具体的事件、你在某项具体任务中的表现、或者某一情况的具体结果。总之，我们不能泛泛而谈。比如你说：“我要搬到新的城市去了，祈祷好运”，大家会搞不懂你在祈祷什么；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，祈祷好运”，这样就对了。另外，这个短语不能用在死亡、重病或是其他跟生死有关的话题上。

2、表示"faith"（信念）还是"luck"（运气）？

如果你对自己有信念faith，那意味着你相信自己有能力获得成功；但是当你用"crossing my fingers"这个短语时，它代表你认为自己也许有能力，但还需要一些运气。所以"keep my fingers crossed"是一种祈祷好运的方式。

3、能否用于无法控制的事情？

这个短语也能用于自己所不能控制的事，比如祈祷明天能有好天气，又如考试考完后祈祷自己能通过（因为考完就不能再改变考试结果了嘛）。

大家都明白了吗？今天就用起来吧！

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翻页还有Alison老师的完整版讲义音频和文本哟>>

【完整版讲义音频】

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!