It reminds me of the German idiom “Die Kuh vom Eis holen“, which means to solve a difficult situation. It’s interesting to see that the image of a cow on ice is construed as a problem in different cultures.
@@consumingkazoos not really… it’s an understandable guess, but the idiom could be translated into English as “fetch the cow from the ice”. The German word “holen” is a verb whose meaning has nothing to do with the English “hole”, despite the graphic similarity.
Which does remind me of another French idiom, “donner sa langue au chat” lit. “Giving your tongue to the cat”. In this case, it means you don’t speak because you can’t answer.
@@kroee I've never seen anything suggesting that "Cat's got your tongue" applies only to embarrassment. I usually hear it in the context of someone simply not having anything to say, such as in a meeting where another person mentioned your concern. Moreover, while the phrase origin is unknown, one of the major possibilities dates to when whipping with a Cat o' Nine Tails was a punishment for misbehaviour on sailing ships. Thus, sailors would hold their tongues (stop gossiping or talking about mutiny) when threatened with the cat. That's a fear response, not shame.
Silly Finnish idioms: 1. Eteenpäin, sanoi mummo lumessa = Forward! Said the grandma in the snow = Let's move on 2. Katoaa kuin pieru Saharaan = It disappears like a fart in the Sahara = It disappears 3. Sil ei oo kaikki muumit laaksossa = He/she doesn't have all the moomins in the valley = He/she isn't ok in the head 4. Ei ole tyhmiä kysymyksiä, on vain tyhmiä kysyjiä = There are no stupid questions, there are only stupid people asking questions 5. Kusta omiin muroihin = To piss in your own cereal = To screw yourself over 6. Vettä tulee kuin Esterin perseestä = The water's pouring like it's coming from Esteri's asshole = It's raining heavily 7. Asia on pihvi = The topic is a steak = The discussion has concluded 8. "Konstit on monet", sanoi mummo, kun kissalla pöytää pyyhki = "There are many ways" said the grandma while she wiped the table with a cat = There can be many solutions to a problem 9. Älä nuolaise ennen kuin tipahtaa = Don't lick before it drops = Don't act too soon 10. Vuonna nakki ja perunamuusi = In the year of sausage and mashed potatoes = A long time ago 11. Hullu kuin hatuntekijä = Crazy like a hat maker = They're crazy 12. Voi vittujen kevät ja kyrpien takatalvi = Oh, the spring of pussies and the long winter of cocks = For fuck's sake
1) Oh! The form [something normal], said [someone], did [something surprising] is (was) common in Swedish. Välkommen i det gröna, sa fan, satte svärmor i nässlorna, Welcome in the green, said the devil, and put his mother-in-law in the nettles. Nu ska vi se, sa den blinde, tog sin yxa och såg. Let's see, said the blind man, fetched his axe and saw. 7) In Swedish Saken är biff similarly means it's done, finished, fixed. Possibly from military "Bifalles" (~ permission granted). 11) That's probably rather widespread, presumably from English(?) 12) absolutely amazing!
@@AntonTheKicker languages are far apart, but I think we share a fair bit of culture 🙂. I wonder how many Swedes feel closer to Finland than to our other neighbours. 🤔
4:24 In Telugu, a South Indian language, we say "Neellu navaladam" which means "to chew on water" as you're trying to buy some time to answer when you actually have nothing to say to the accusation you just received 😄
Puerto Rica Spanish has "Even a pumpkin can roll down a hill". It's a way to say that a car is not a good car. In American English, we may say "jalopy" or "real beater" to mean a terrible car, but I prefer just saying the whole phrase "Even a pumpkin can roll down a hill". It's so much more imaginative.
I used to guess idioms with language students from different countries, and hardly anyone was able to guess the meaning of an idioms translated word for word. Most guesses were wide off.
I've recently started studying Chinese and some fun ones I've run across are: 马上/mashang; means immediately/ in a hurry, but the characters literally mean "on a horse" 加油/jiayou; means "to add oil/refuel" but is also a chant of encouragement to work hard (like at sports events)
@@NickCombs Somewhat similar. Both terms refer to someone who isn't a participant in an event claiming to have knowledge that the participants lack. But "Monday morning quarterback" adds that this person is making remarks after the event is over with the benefit of hindsight. This is because American pro football games are mostly played on Sundays.
"Echar la casa por la ventana" - Spanish, "throw the house through the window". My high school Spanish teacher, who was a Spaniard, told us this meant "to throw a wild party". However, I just double checked it by googling it, and the Interwebz says that it means to spend extravagantly. (I suppose the former is one way to do the latter, so they are not unrelated.) I also found out you can "botar" the house (another way to say "throw"), or "tirar" the house (to pull).
_Tirar_ in this context is better translated as 'throw' or even 'throw out,' as in _tirar la basura_ ('throw out the garbage') and hence quite appropriate.
In my native language Odia ( its a conservative Indo-Aryan language spoken in Odisha, India), we have an idiom which goes like:- "Gaan Jhiyaw Singaninaaki, Nawra Jhiyaw Ghuawmuhin" Literally- The village girl has snot all around the year, while the city/town girl has an ugly/shitty face. Its actual meaning is, the village girl is hardworking but gullible (good as a maid-cum wife), while the city girl is a slug at work but good as a trophy wife (with her makeup/communication skills). Basically sexism 😂.
Aussie's "Kangaroo loose in the top paddock" and my mind went instantly to "You have bats in your belfry". The French "Avaler des couleuvres" is simplifed in English to "gob smacked". Fun comparisons listed here but I guess age makes a difference as I don't know what the cool kids say today.
"kangaroo loose in the top paddock" is exceedingly rare, and hasn't been all that common in the last 80ish years. these days, we're much more likely to say some variation of 'got a screw loose' or 'a few sandwiches short of a picnic'. either that or we just say that they're 'nuts', 'crazy', or 'insane'. in more informal conversation, people typically insert an expletive before one of the previous words.
one extremely regional one in exclusively the town I grew up in in tunisa used a phrase that roughly translates as "Tell me that with a fish in your hand" meaning that you don't believe them, since we lived in the hottest most inland part of the country, so getting fish was nigh on impossible until about 10 years ago, and even now when I go back there it costs more than 10 times what it does in the capital.
In Dutch we say "maak dat de kat wijs!" or to make the cat believe that. An English expression would be "tell that to the horse marines". Then there is a booklet with the title "make that the cat wise" with funny mistranslations from Dutch into English...
I love that German and Portuguese have a nearly identical idiom for when the thought of something (usually bad news) finally hits or sinks in. German: Der Groschen ist gefallen. Portuguese: A ficha caiu. Both translate into "the token/10 cent coin has fallen". Brazil had high inflation when this was created and people used to buy token coins to use on public telephones (or else public phones would need readjusting every couple of months or so). Germany had a more stable economy and the 10 cents of a Mark coin was the one used on public phones. The idea being that you are only charged once the other side picks up and you hear the coin/token falling inside the phone, meaning that's when you start paying for the call.
There are even idioms from other countries make it to English. For example: " je ne sais quoi" is French for "I don't know what". Of course, people who speak English can just say "I don't know what", but if a person is unique/eccentric, or a speaker wants to sound posh, they could use the French version.
@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648 maybe, but I think of it as something that is hard to explain something positive or intriguing (personality trait) rather than a phrase to avoid saying something vulgar or impolite.
@@kandipiatkowski8589 Exactly. When the French phrase was common in the US -- up to forty years ago, perhaps -- it always meant something like 'that indefinable something.'
I'm pretty sure "loose 'roo in the top paddock" is rhyming slang or backsolveing from "a loose screw in in the head". Kangaroos generally aren't to bothered by fences built for sheep or cattle, they just jump over them, and the top paddock is the furthest away/least valuable/hardest to work pasture. So actually having a kangaroo there is of no concern. But a roo (screw) loose in the top paddock (head) is a rational sentence with quite a different meaning.
Idioms are really interesting when it comes to the sort of "spell" they cast when said in full. However, if you change on word, even if it means the same thing, the spell breaks, and now you're speaking gibberish. e.g. "It ain't over 'till the fat lady sings." = It isn't over yet. "It ain't over 'till the obese lady sings." = wtf are you talking about? This is fatphobia! etc.
Here in Spain, there's the expression, 'Por si las moscas' (some thing along the lines of 'if there are flies' 🤷) = 'Just in case' as an idiom in English
This may seem like a random topic, but I’d like to see more ASL videos on this channel. I think that ASL’s such a cool language, and it’s a very very hard language to use in the beginning and you have to get REALLY good at it with a lot of practice, if you’re not a native user of it. But that’s just what I’d like to see personally ☺️
So this is an interesting one- ASL, for those who don't know, is American Sign Language. There's also British Sign Language (BSL), Black American Sign Language (BASL)... and a different sign language for each Deaf culture that developed one, as happens with spoken languages. I agree, it would be great to see more analysis of sign languages. There are some great Deaf TH-camrs who do this kind of thing.
One of the newest, and also best idioms in Polish is: Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy. Literaly: Not my circus, not my monkies. It is seing you use when there is some situation you know is going to be bad, but you are not responsible, so you dont care. Basicly "not my bussines".
Some idioms just don't work in other languages. The prime example: "It's all Greek to me" (indicating an inability to understand something) would mean nothing to a native Greek speaker. I've been told, however, that Greek has its own version of the expression that literally means, "It's Chinese!"
I love the norwegian idiom "Å drite på draget". Literally to "take a dump on the railing". Comes from sailers from before they had toilets on the boat, so they took the dump over the railing. While holding the railing to not fall over. If you missed and it went elsewhere, you'd make a real mess of it yourself. Which is what it means today: Making a real blunder or mess for yourself.
One of my faves from Spanish is "Tener pájaros en la cabeza" (to have birds in one's head) -- which is to say, to have pie-in-the-sky ideas, unrealistic aspirations that will never come true.
There is even the idiom in Germany of "someone leads a cow onto the ice". I think it is for being totaly wrong. Another interesting idiom is that "somebody writes something behind their ears" for taking it by heart. That comes from the mid ages, I think. When there war a job, there was a master and his apprentice. And when the master gives the apprentice an important number he shouldn't forget he slapped him on his ears, in order for it to sink in quickly.
"There is even the idiom in Germany of "someone leads a cow onto the ice". I think it is for being totaly wrong." I'm German but I've never heard that. WhatI've heard is the opposite "get the cow off the ice" (solve a problem/dangerous situation). And of course "If the cow (or donkey) feels to well, it will go on the ice"
You could write an entire book on Japanese cat idioms, someone probably has.. It's NAY KO, Japanese uses Italian-style vowels (only 5 sounds). Nikko (knee (hold breath and spit out) ko) is a temple complex/tourist draw west of Tokyo.
Opened the video, thought of "a few roos loose in the top paddock", and BAM! there it was. Magnificent. We've also got some idioms for people who are a bit stupid, like "not the sharpest tool in the shed" or "not the brightest bulb in the box". Also got idioms for when someone's not being honest, like "are you fair dinkum?" or "Don't come the raw prawn with me". And there's the great cover-all answer: "Yeah, nah." Also can be expressed as "Nah, yeah."`
greek has an idiom that goes "κοίταξε να δεις" which translates to "look to see" and it's like saying "listen" usually in an annoyed tone; something like just saying "look!" in english, in the same context
we've got a couple ien Afrikaans: "As dit pap reen moet jy skep" (trans: "if it's raining pap you must scoop it up", iow when an opportunity presents itself you must seize it.); "Vra my broer Jack, hy lieg nes ek" (ask my brother Jack, he lies just like me) a rhyme that basically responds to being asked a useless question (as in a sarcastic way of saying "i don't know"). Not an idiom but a funny response to a stupid question is "Piet Pompies". Often used similarly to "The Queen of England" or "the Tooth fairy" as a response to being asked a simple question about a subject when the subject in question is obvious.; "As did 'n slang was sou dit jou gepik het" (trans: if it was a snake, it would have bitten you already, iow when you are trying to look for something that is hiding in plain sight, especially when you are the only one oblivious to it).; another related one is "jy gaan toe oe deur die lewe" (trans: you are going through life with your eyes closed, iow you are blissfully oblivious to what should be obvious)
A wolf in sheep's clothing is something dangerous that seems harmless, like a Q-ship, which looked like a beat-up old freighter, but carried hidden guns. We also have the reverse--a sheep in wolf's clothing is something that looks frightening/tough/dangerous but isn't.
Well, gummy bears don't grow in Finland either, but we have the phrase "Tasan ei käy nallekarkit" which literally translates to something like "Gummy bears aren't distributed equally", and practically means that things aren't always equal, life isn't always fair.
Oh man, this reminds me of when me and a few of my friends came up with a few of our own Swedish idioms; the best one probably being "Åka skridskor i uppförsbacke" (Eng: Ice skating up a hill). It would mean "to make something unnecessarily difficult for oneself".
In Chinese, there's an idiom called "吹牛皮(blowing cowskin)", means talk big speak boastingly. Because the ancients blowing cowskin to make airbags for rafts. The cowskin are being blown out = The person's big words just too big and won't cut it....
That French snake idiom reminds me of the Dutch idiom "Er zit een addertje onder het gras", literally translated it means "There's a little viper under the grass". It means that something sounds very good, but there is something nasty that you won't see so easily, but which makes it all less good than it appears, or even downright terrible. An unofficial idiom derived from it is "Waar zit de adder?" meaning "Where is the viper?" It basically suggests that you already detected there's something nasty about something seeming so good, but that you don't yet now what the nasty thing is. Now the wolf in sheep's clothes also exists in Dutch as "wolf in schaapskleren" which is a literal translation actually. "Een paar schroeven los" is actually also "a couple of scews loose". Both idioms are actually used in the same context. I nice Dutch idiom is also "Maak dat de kat wijs". Literally translated (English Grammar be damned) it means "make that the cat wise". Now "wijsmaken" (lit. "make wise") means that someone made you believe a nonsensical story to be true (and that's why I came up with that faulty grammar version, as it's hard to translate correctly without losing the original context). So the Dutch idiom basically means that your story sounds so nonsensical that even the cat won't believe it. There is also the variant "Maak dat de ganzen wijs", it means the same, only the cat has been replaced by geese. Now a Dutch idiom I like is "Het slaat als een tang op een varken". Literally translated it means: "It hits like a pair of thongs on a pig". I guess that didn't make sense at all. Well that's precisely what it means.
"Unaware of the wiles of the snake in the grass, And the fate of the maiden who topes, She lowered her standards by raising her glass, Her courage, her eyes, and his hopes." --- Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, "Have some Madeira, M'Dear"
An old work friend of mine COINED an idiom, in English, that I think should be in wide use. “Tell the microwave.” It’s specific, but perfect. It’s when you’re fighting an unwinable battle with someone of lesser intellect, like, “you might as well go plead your case to the microwave.” ✌🏼
Um, I wonder if it needs to be used by some type of regional or population compacity? Have you looked into that? If so how would you popularize the concept? I think you have put some thought into this and have an interest in how you see things.
Sorry to disappoint you, but if nobody but your friend is using it, it's not an idiom. 😜 (It might, however, count as being part of your friend's "idiolect", which means an individual's own peculiar and unique version of their language.)
In Tagalog we have "kapit sa patalim" which directly translates to "grab on to the sharp blade." It means someone is desperate that they are willing to do dangerous and immoral things. It also have a note of hopelessness, that they are doomed even then. There is some nuance here that is lost in translation. Kapit doesn't mean just to grab on but there is also a force that is pulling what you are grabing on to away from your grip and that bad results, or even death, would happen if you let go; like grabing on to someone's hand while you are dangling off a cliff. You can think of "kapit sa patalim" as someone holding on to a sharp blade as they hang over a cliff.
This sounds a bit like the english (I don't know if it's just in Britain?) expression : "by the skin of his teeth" or "hanging on by the skin of your teeth" I think it might be used in some similar situations, but I like the Tagalog one better. It sounds a lot more urgent!
@3:57 as someone who has had a garter snake for a pet, and I love them generally, this grass snake idiom fills me with horror. That is something I just would never want to do.
In Québec, we have an expression called "Enfirwhopper". It's a deformation of the English phrase, "Wrapped in fur" (lit. In fur- wrapped). It means that you were fooled, played by someone's flattery into believing they are on your side when they are not.
In Dutch, if you’re really sleepy, you could say “I’m falling off my stick,” meaning to invoke the imagery of a bird so sleepy it can’t even stay on its perch. Also, if you eat something that tastes very good, you could say “it’s like an angel is peeing on my tongue.” This comes from the idea that cherubs are supposed to pee sugar water.
I recently heard one from South Africa. When one begins a venture with a large amount of money and continues to lose money rather than make a profit, they are said to be "farming backwards."
Whenever we talk about idioms "it's time to put the cat on the table" (or "on the wall" or "on the wallpaper") because we're getting down to business and talking about something that is bothering us (note: a reference to a Finnish idiom and its three variants; originates from checking the sex of the cat).
If "a kangaroo loose in the top paddock" means "got a screw loose", then you really should have mentioned "having bats in the belfry". Is that one limited to the U.S.?
A Filipino idiom that struck me is "Itaga mo sa bato" - "Strike it in stone" which means: "Remember the promise or what was agreed upon". This is very similar to "Cast it in stone" in English.
In Brazil we have "gato escaldado tem medo de água fria" which cana be translated as "a cat that got burnt by boiling water will be afraid of cold water" and is used to say that someone is being over cautious because of a past trauma.
Cows are not good on slippy surfaces , their feet are very hard horn and give them little grip on an impervious , firm surface. Smooth wet ( read covered in slurry) concrete can be deadly to large cattle.
It might be related to calling someone a "hack", too. Since the qu sound is gentler than the hard h, a quack is like a softer version of a hack. Someone doing a hack job makes a right mess of things. Someone doing a quack job is incompetent but not absolutely butchering it. Maybe.
@IcicleFerret with just a basic Google I found this, "The term quack originates from quacksalver, or kwakzalver, a Dutch word for a seller of nostrums, medical cures of dubious and secretive origins." Intresting that we both arrived at answers unrelated to the original but still made sense. Speaks to the phrases longevity ig
About that duck blowing, which do Latvians. There is clay toy whistle with water i it in form of duck. Also they are without use of water - with some holes on sides - you can get various sounds. «Pūst pīlītes»
2:12 That idiom reminds me of the line in Pulp Fiction, where 1 character is saying something the other thinks is ridiculous, and the other says "you sound like a duck."
Just going off the title - in English "To play the innocent" in Mexican Spanish is "Like a man throwing stones" It took a friend of mine demonstrating it to get why they said it that way. TBH his demonstration was hilarious.
Not sure this counts as an idiom exactly; but in German the word "nüchtern" means both "sober" (not intoxicated) and "fasting". Let me tell you, I was quite taken aback when a doctor in Austria, speaking to me in excellent but clearly not perfect English, chose the wrong translation and asked me, prior to drawing blood for a blood test, "Are you sober?" (As an aside, I can't help but notice that the German word "sauber" means clean, pure, or unsoiled. It looks an awful lot like the English word "sober", but I don't know if they are etymologically related or if that's just a coincidence. But it would make a nice story if they were related and the English "sober" were likewise related to "cleanliness", since cleanliness in that sense could be the concept that ties together "sober" and "fasting".)
@@alchang1515 Man muß nicht. Aber ich bin Americanisch, und mein Arzt konnte sehr gut Englisch, und er hat immer mit mir Englisch gesprochen. Was ich mochte sagen ist: wo Deutsch hat ein wort, Englisch hat zwei. Für ihm, sind die zwei gleich. Aber für mich, sind sie ganz unterschiedlich. Weil er Deutsch besser als Englisch konnte, hat er etwas sehr lustig auf Englisch gesagt! (Eigentlich war er niederländisch.)
And after challenging myself to figure out how to say that in German, I then took it to Google Translate, to see what it "thinks". I had it translate my German words back into English, and it understood me perfectly; but when I then flipped it to produce German from that text, it produced this seemingly more polished version. It even somehow guessed my gender correctly! Sharing this because maybe it's easier to understand than what I wrote myself. And because other translation nerds might be amused: "Das müssen Sie nicht. Aber ich bin Amerikanerin, und mein Arzt sprach sehr gut Englisch, und er hat immer Englisch mit mir gesprochen. Was ich sagen wollte, ist: Wo Deutsch ein Wort hat, hat Englisch zwei. Für ihn sind die beiden gleich. Aber für mich sind sie sehr unterschiedlich. Weil er besser Deutsch als Englisch sprach, sagte er etwas sehr Lustiges auf Englisch! (Eigentlich war er Niederländer.)"
@@sharonminsuk It's worth noting that the verb _nüchten_ does mean fasting more narrowly. An English word that almost straddles the meanings is "abstaining": one normally abstains from a specific thing, such as alcohol, shellfish, or smoking, but abstaining from food for a stretch doesn't seem like too much of a semantic stretch. The Austria-Netherlands connection reminds me of a German who lived in Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate, when the country was almost entirely closed to foreigners. From 1641, they allowed a single narrow exception for a Dutch enclave in Dejima. (An "artificial island" created at Nagasaki harbor by cutting a canal across a small peninsula.) In addition to all trade with the outside world, it was Japan's eye into Rangaku ('Dutch learning' -- i.e., western science, medicine, etc.) Only Dutch were allowed to live there, under tight supervision. In 1823, Philipp Franz von Siebold arrived there as physician-and-scientist (paid, as the shogunate required, by the Dutch East Indies Company). He was German, but passed himself (and his accent) off as "Mountain Dutch." (Absurd, yet reasonable in the broader sense of the Dutch/Teuton word. Especially as the Netherlands was then the only explicitly deutsches Land, afaik.)
My grandfather, born 1900, would say "I had to tell them how the cow ate the cabbage" Which could mean two things. 1 to tell a person the unvarnished truth, even if they would rather not hear it. 2 to state one’s opinion forcefully or to tell someone off.
One that I have been using for many years is the English translation of I think a Polish idiom: "Not my circus, not my monkeys." I use it at least a few times a week.
Also Australian, and one of this US-American's favorite, _A fart in a phone booth._ The meaning is obvious, but Dustin Hoffman used a version of this metaphor in _Rain Man._ Almost guaranteed to bring on the _technicolor yawn._
My best friend was Chinese and at times we compared sayings in our respective languages. I told him the english saying, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" (meaning the person who complains gets attention and help), and he told me the saying in Chinese was exactly the opposite, to wit, "the nail that stands up gets pounded down" - LOL
I was thinking of the French idiom, “(pardon the spelling) … repondez d’escalier …”, “… response of/from the stairs …”, as something, some zinger you should have said but didn’t think of till after you had left, as you were descending the stairs.
Have you heard: "Teach your grandmother to suck eggs" meaning "don't try to tell me what I already know" with an implied insult meaning "you come from a long line of weasels." Sure would like to know the origin of that one, which I heard in Nova Scotia some 50 years ago.
1:05 nice idiom, wrong flag. It may be Spanish, but it's Latin American only; in fact, it's mostly Cuban (even Urban Dictionary has it as "Cuban slang"), but it has been exported to some Central American countries, Venezuela and, most recently, Peru. In Spain proper (where the flag points), the equivalents would be "se montó un pollo" ("a chicken got onto it", corruption of "se montó un poyo", "someone stood onto a stone bench [to make an inflammatory speech]"), "se armó la de San Quintín" ("there was a commotion like the one at St. Quentin's", in reference to an historical prison uprising) and "se armó la marimorena" ("marimorena" woud mean "tanned Mary", but it's suspected it's a mondegreen or corruption of a word or words from another language). 4:09 it's related to idioms in other Romance languages, but inverted; the opposite expression, "to spit out toads and grass snakes", means "to say profanities", usually in relation to a perceived insult, so when you are in a position where you would be shouting profanities, but you keep them inside (either by your will or due to the shock) it's like you are swallowing them instead of spitting them out.
In American English one of my favorites is 'even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then... usually shortened to even a blind squirrel finds a nut. Can be interpreted as , you are hopeless/ you are stupid/ are you really that blind dependent on context.
There was a fad in France for some years to eat asps as a sort of health food, I understand, to the point of driving some varieties to near extinction. Probably not related to the idiom.
Argentina/Uruguay: "¡Cómo estará la cañada que el chancho la cruzó al trote!" Literally The creek got so shallow that even the pig could wade it trotting along! meaning that things got so unusually bad that someone did an unthinkable thing.
In Thai, the word “เซ็งเป็ด” exists. “เซ็ง”mean bored or irksome but “เป็ด” means duck, which mean bored duck or duck bored if switched, but the problem is that I’m not sure if it was a idiom
There's a rather interesting Australian one I heard: "I'm not here to f*ck spiders" it's basically a rather colorful way to point out the obvious or to communicate that you're already doing something. Example one: you and a friend are at a bar and they ask you if you want a drink. Example two: someone asks if you're going to make dinner while you're clearly getting things prepped.
He, in Norway we also have the wolf in sheep clothing idiom. Maybe someone imported it a long long time ago? Maybe they all stem from the same sourse? Who knows! 🤷🏽♀️
most fascinating are idioms that are the same but aren't. like how in english you compare not an apple with oranges when in german you instead would never compare them so pears. like they are obviously the same idiom but somehow one of the fruits had an identity crisis and changed it's species
Suggest a topic for next Monday's video!
Why a cat is your hat in your thumbnail. You could have just read the book "A Cat in the Hat." 🐈🎩
😅😅😅
why do someslavic languages call "40" literally "crows" (sorok) instead of for+ten
Gym Leader names, anime puns.
Isn’t it odd that negative questions exist?
"There's no cow on the ice, as long as its tail/arse is on land" is the full Swedish idiom.
It reminds me of the German idiom “Die Kuh vom Eis holen“, which means to solve a difficult situation. It’s interesting to see that the image of a cow on ice is construed as a problem in different cultures.
@@SimonLangx as an english that doesnt know a word of german, i read that as "the cow from ice hole" is that even remotely close
@@consumingkazoos not really… it’s an understandable guess, but the idiom could be translated into English as “fetch the cow from the ice”. The German word “holen” is a verb whose meaning has nothing to do with the English “hole”, despite the graphic similarity.
@@SimonLangx It's more "get the cow off the ice"
@@SimonLangx The word "holen" does bear a notable similarity to the word "haul" though.
4:41 I'd say the closest English phrase would be "Cat's got your tongue" for being left speechless.
In Polish we say "zapomnieć języka w gębie" - "to forget about the tongue in your mouth" when someone is left speechless for whatever reason
Which does remind me of another French idiom, “donner sa langue au chat” lit. “Giving your tongue to the cat”. In this case, it means you don’t speak because you can’t answer.
Not exactly the same. "Cat's got your tongue" is when someone can't speak because they're ashamed or embarrassed.
@@kroee I've never seen anything suggesting that "Cat's got your tongue" applies only to embarrassment. I usually hear it in the context of someone simply not having anything to say, such as in a meeting where another person mentioned your concern. Moreover, while the phrase origin is unknown, one of the major possibilities dates to when whipping with a Cat o' Nine Tails was a punishment for misbehaviour on sailing ships. Thus, sailors would hold their tongues (stop gossiping or talking about mutiny) when threatened with the cat. That's a fear response, not shame.
Silly Finnish idioms:
1.
Eteenpäin, sanoi mummo lumessa = Forward! Said the grandma in the snow = Let's move on
2.
Katoaa kuin pieru Saharaan = It disappears like a fart in the Sahara = It disappears
3.
Sil ei oo kaikki muumit laaksossa = He/she doesn't have all the moomins in the valley = He/she isn't ok in the head
4.
Ei ole tyhmiä kysymyksiä, on vain tyhmiä kysyjiä = There are no stupid questions, there are only stupid people asking questions
5.
Kusta omiin muroihin = To piss in your own cereal = To screw yourself over
6.
Vettä tulee kuin Esterin perseestä = The water's pouring like it's coming from Esteri's asshole = It's raining heavily
7.
Asia on pihvi = The topic is a steak = The discussion has concluded
8.
"Konstit on monet", sanoi mummo, kun kissalla pöytää pyyhki = "There are many ways" said the grandma while she wiped the table with a cat = There can be many solutions to a problem
9.
Älä nuolaise ennen kuin tipahtaa = Don't lick before it drops = Don't act too soon
10.
Vuonna nakki ja perunamuusi = In the year of sausage and mashed potatoes = A long time ago
11.
Hullu kuin hatuntekijä = Crazy like a hat maker = They're crazy
12.
Voi vittujen kevät ja kyrpien takatalvi = Oh, the spring of pussies and the long winter of cocks = For fuck's sake
idk why but finnish sounds somewhat close to greenlandic for me: they also use long wovels.
1) Oh! The form [something normal], said [someone], did [something surprising] is (was) common in Swedish. Välkommen i det gröna, sa fan, satte svärmor i nässlorna, Welcome in the green, said the devil, and put his mother-in-law in the nettles. Nu ska vi se, sa den blinde, tog sin yxa och såg. Let's see, said the blind man, fetched his axe and saw.
7) In Swedish Saken är biff similarly means it's done, finished, fixed. Possibly from military "Bifalles" (~ permission granted).
11) That's probably rather widespread, presumably from English(?)
12) absolutely amazing!
@@mellertid Seems Finns and Swedes have a very similar sense of humor
@@AntonTheKicker languages are far apart, but I think we share a fair bit of culture 🙂. I wonder how many Swedes feel closer to Finland than to our other neighbours. 🤔
Of course, there has to be a Moomin idiom. Awesome.
4:24 In Telugu, a South Indian language, we say "Neellu navaladam" which means "to chew on water" as you're trying to buy some time to answer when you actually have nothing to say to the accusation you just received 😄
haha, love that one
Puerto Rica Spanish has "Even a pumpkin can roll down a hill". It's a way to say that a car is not a good car. In American English, we may say "jalopy" or "real beater" to mean a terrible car, but I prefer just saying the whole phrase "Even a pumpkin can roll down a hill". It's so much more imaginative.
We also call it a lemon. Another fruit, funny enough.
I used to guess idioms with language students from different countries, and hardly anyone was able to guess the meaning of an idioms translated word for word. Most guesses were wide off.
In Haitian Creole, we have the term _pat mouch_ (fly's paws) to refer to illegible writing; it's akin to the English term "chicken scratches".
and polish 'bazgrzec pazurem' and chinese 乱话 probably
It likely came from French, because "une écriture en pattes de mouches" has the exact same meaning.
@@nabuchodonosormcgalapatram6941
Highly likely, given that French is one of the bases of Haitian Creole.
In Dutch it would be called "hanepoten" or cock's paws.
In German it’s „Sauklaue“ wich means „pig‘s claw“.
I've recently started studying Chinese and some fun ones I've run across are:
马上/mashang; means immediately/ in a hurry, but the characters literally mean "on a horse"
加油/jiayou; means "to add oil/refuel" but is also a chant of encouragement to work hard (like at sports events)
American English has the idiom "Monday morning quarterback," which is totally meaningless to English speakers unfamiliar with American football.
It's similar to "armchair expert" if I'm not mistaken.
@@NickCombs Somewhat similar. Both terms refer to someone who isn't a participant in an event claiming to have knowledge that the participants lack. But "Monday morning quarterback" adds that this person is making remarks after the event is over with the benefit of hindsight. This is because American pro football games are mostly played on Sundays.
"Rhoi'r ffidl yn y tô" is my favourite Welsh idiom. It means "to give up", and is literally saying "put the fiddle in the roof/attic"
'Rhoi'r ddraig yn y to' would mean 'put the dragon in the attic'?
@@埊 yeah. "rhoi" means "put" and "yn y tô" means "in the roof/attic"(more towards roof).
Here's one from Polish that I really like: Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Meaning: Something like "Not my responsibility, not my problem."
I use _It's your turkey. You stuff it._
A Polish one I use a lot is 'waiting for the yolk to soak in'
which describes someone who just woke up and is still kind of fuzzy headed
"Echar la casa por la ventana" - Spanish, "throw the house through the window". My high school Spanish teacher, who was a Spaniard, told us this meant "to throw a wild party". However, I just double checked it by googling it, and the Interwebz says that it means to spend extravagantly. (I suppose the former is one way to do the latter, so they are not unrelated.) I also found out you can "botar" the house (another way to say "throw"), or "tirar" the house (to pull).
_Tirar_ in this context is better translated as 'throw' or even 'throw out,' as in _tirar la basura_ ('throw out the garbage') and hence quite appropriate.
@@AlfredKriman Thanks! I (obviously) didn't know that.
In my native language Odia ( its a conservative Indo-Aryan language spoken in Odisha, India), we have an idiom which goes like:-
"Gaan Jhiyaw Singaninaaki, Nawra Jhiyaw Ghuawmuhin"
Literally- The village girl has snot all around the year, while the city/town girl has an ugly/shitty face.
Its actual meaning is, the village girl is hardworking but gullible (good as a maid-cum wife), while the city girl is a slug at work but good as a trophy wife (with her makeup/communication skills). Basically sexism 😂.
Aussie's "Kangaroo loose in the top paddock" and my mind went instantly to "You have bats in your belfry". The French "Avaler des couleuvres" is simplifed in English to "gob smacked". Fun comparisons listed here but I guess age makes a difference as I don't know what the cool kids say today.
"kangaroo loose in the top paddock" is exceedingly rare, and hasn't been all that common in the last 80ish years. these days, we're much more likely to say some variation of 'got a screw loose' or 'a few sandwiches short of a picnic'. either that or we just say that they're 'nuts', 'crazy', or 'insane'. in more informal conversation, people typically insert an expletive before one of the previous words.
The lights are on, but there's no-one at home. The stairs don't go to the top floor.
one extremely regional one in exclusively the town I grew up in in tunisa used a phrase that roughly translates as "Tell me that with a fish in your hand" meaning that you don't believe them, since we lived in the hottest most inland part of the country, so getting fish was nigh on impossible until about 10 years ago, and even now when I go back there it costs more than 10 times what it does in the capital.
In Dutch we say "maak dat de kat wijs!" or to make the cat believe that. An English expression would be "tell that to the horse marines".
Then there is a booklet with the title "make that the cat wise" with funny mistranslations from Dutch into English...
I love that German and Portuguese have a nearly identical idiom for when the thought of something (usually bad news) finally hits or sinks in. German: Der Groschen ist gefallen. Portuguese: A ficha caiu. Both translate into "the token/10 cent coin has fallen". Brazil had high inflation when this was created and people used to buy token coins to use on public telephones (or else public phones would need readjusting every couple of months or so). Germany had a more stable economy and the 10 cents of a Mark coin was the one used on public phones. The idea being that you are only charged once the other side picks up and you hear the coin/token falling inside the phone, meaning that's when you start paying for the call.
"the token has fallen" exists in Hungarian too, I think it comes from the German, as it was the official language here for a while
Tiøren er faldet/Der faldt 10-øren (Danish).
The English equivalent is "The penny dropped".
We have the exact same idiom in Turkish. "Jeton düştü" -> "the token has fallen". Jeton is a direct loanword from French that we use for token btw.
I wonder if this has any relation to “the die has been cast” of Julius Caesar. It’s close in concept.
There are even idioms from other countries make it to English. For example: " je ne sais quoi" is French for "I don't know what". Of course, people who speak English can just say "I don't know what", but if a person is unique/eccentric, or a speaker wants to sound posh, they could use the French version.
A euphemism for something that would be unmentionable in polite company?
@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648 maybe, but I think of it as something that is hard to explain something positive or intriguing (personality trait) rather than a phrase to avoid saying something vulgar or impolite.
@@kandipiatkowski8589 Exactly. When the French phrase was common in the US -- up to forty years ago, perhaps -- it always meant something like 'that indefinable something.'
I'm pretty sure "loose 'roo in the top paddock" is rhyming slang or backsolveing from "a loose screw in in the head". Kangaroos generally aren't to bothered by fences built for sheep or cattle, they just jump over them, and the top paddock is the furthest away/least valuable/hardest to work pasture. So actually having a kangaroo there is of no concern. But a roo (screw) loose in the top paddock (head) is a rational sentence with quite a different meaning.
How would you get from 'head' to 'top paddock' though? Not saying you're wrong, just seems like a big leap.
Translations of puns, jokes and innuendos in movies
Oooh that’s a good one
Idioms are really interesting when it comes to the sort of "spell" they cast when said in full. However, if you change on word, even if it means the same thing, the spell breaks, and now you're speaking gibberish.
e.g. "It ain't over 'till the fat lady sings." = It isn't over yet.
"It ain't over 'till the obese lady sings." = wtf are you talking about? This is fatphobia!
etc.
Here in Spain, there's the expression, 'Por si las moscas' (some thing along the lines of 'if there are flies' 🤷) = 'Just in case' as an idiom in English
This may seem like a random topic, but I’d like to see more ASL videos on this channel. I think that ASL’s such a cool language, and it’s a very very hard language to use in the beginning and you have to get REALLY good at it with a lot of practice, if you’re not a native user of it. But that’s just what I’d like to see personally ☺️
This sounds really interesting!
So this is an interesting one- ASL, for those who don't know, is American Sign Language. There's also British Sign Language (BSL), Black American Sign Language (BASL)... and a different sign language for each Deaf culture that developed one, as happens with spoken languages. I agree, it would be great to see more analysis of sign languages. There are some great Deaf TH-camrs who do this kind of thing.
@@sammarks9146 Do you have any recommendations or keywords to use to find those Deaf TH-camrs doing the analysis?
One of the newest, and also best idioms in Polish is: Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy. Literaly: Not my circus, not my monkies. It is seing you use when there is some situation you know is going to be bad, but you are not responsible, so you dont care. Basicly "not my bussines".
ne moi sirk, ne moe maopy, aso ne moi jiazik.
Some idioms just don't work in other languages. The prime example: "It's all Greek to me" (indicating an inability to understand something) would mean nothing to a native Greek speaker. I've been told, however, that Greek has its own version of the expression that literally means, "It's Chinese!"
Yeah in the same category falls the german idion "das kommt mir spanisch vor" ("that seems to be spanic").
Others would say, that it is fishy.
I'm pretty sure he has a video on this exact topic, so you should definitely watch it.
In Nicaragua, I tried to translate the phrase "going Dutch". The folks there thought it was funny; they say "going American"!
There are many other languages that use exactly the "it's Chinese" idiom, including Arabic
In Danish we use "Might as well be Russian" for that xD
I love the norwegian idiom "Å drite på draget". Literally to "take a dump on the railing". Comes from sailers from before they had toilets on the boat, so they took the dump over the railing. While holding the railing to not fall over. If you missed and it went elsewhere, you'd make a real mess of it yourself. Which is what it means today: Making a real blunder or mess for yourself.
I remember how my father said that learning languages is like learning a different way of thinking. It's very close.
One of my faves from Spanish is "Tener pájaros en la cabeza" (to have birds in one's head) -- which is to say, to have pie-in-the-sky ideas, unrealistic aspirations that will never come true.
There is even the idiom in Germany of "someone leads a cow onto the ice". I think it is for being totaly wrong.
Another interesting idiom is that "somebody writes something behind their ears" for taking it by heart. That comes from the mid ages, I think. When there war a job, there was a master and his apprentice. And when the master gives the apprentice an important number he shouldn't forget he slapped him on his ears, in order for it to sink in quickly.
"There is even the idiom in Germany of "someone leads a cow onto the ice". I think it is for being totaly wrong."
I'm German but I've never heard that.
WhatI've heard is the opposite "get the cow off the ice" (solve a problem/dangerous situation). And of course "If the cow (or donkey) feels to well, it will go on the ice"
Do the English get “coast is clear” from the feeling of relief when you’re not being invaded by sea
More likely from smugglers looking out for the Coast Guard.
"For swallowing snakes" maybe "cat's got your tounge?" It's not specifically about insults though...
You could write an entire book on Japanese cat idioms, someone probably has..
It's NAY KO, Japanese uses Italian-style vowels (only 5 sounds). Nikko (knee (hold breath and spit out) ko) is a temple complex/tourist draw west of Tokyo.
Opened the video, thought of "a few roos loose in the top paddock", and BAM! there it was. Magnificent.
We've also got some idioms for people who are a bit stupid, like "not the sharpest tool in the shed" or "not the brightest bulb in the box". Also got idioms for when someone's not being honest, like "are you fair dinkum?" or "Don't come the raw prawn with me".
And there's the great cover-all answer: "Yeah, nah." Also can be expressed as "Nah, yeah."`
We're not here to f**k spiders = we're not here to waste time.
I don't know if I'd call "are you fair dinkum?" an idiom. It's just "are you true (honest)?" with a bit of slang thrown in
My favorite is "The lights are on but nobody's home"
greek has an idiom that goes "κοίταξε να δεις" which translates to "look to see" and it's like saying "listen" usually in an annoyed tone; something like just saying "look!" in english, in the same context
romanisation is 'koitase na deis'?
@埊 people in greece transcribe greek to the latin alphabet in a weird way so i don't understand what you mean.. pronunciation?
@@flupydareal yeah, how it is 音.
@@埊 then i guess «kitaxe na deis» or in the ipa something like « 'ci.ta.kse na ðis » ... idk how to write the ð sound
we've got a couple ien Afrikaans: "As dit pap reen moet jy skep" (trans: "if it's raining pap you must scoop it up", iow when an opportunity presents itself you must seize it.); "Vra my broer Jack, hy lieg nes ek" (ask my brother Jack, he lies just like me) a rhyme that basically responds to being asked a useless question (as in a sarcastic way of saying "i don't know"). Not an idiom but a funny response to a stupid question is "Piet Pompies". Often used similarly to "The Queen of England" or "the Tooth fairy" as a response to being asked a simple question about a subject when the subject in question is obvious.; "As did 'n slang was sou dit jou gepik het" (trans: if it was a snake, it would have bitten you already, iow when you are trying to look for something that is hiding in plain sight, especially when you are the only one oblivious to it).; another related one is "jy gaan toe oe deur die lewe" (trans: you are going through life with your eyes closed, iow you are blissfully oblivious to what should be obvious)
A wolf in sheep's clothing is not necessarily some who's mean pretending to be nice. It means anyone being deceitful or duplicitous.
A wolf in sheep's clothing is something dangerous that seems harmless, like a Q-ship, which looked like a beat-up old freighter, but carried hidden guns. We also have the reverse--a sheep in wolf's clothing is something that looks frightening/tough/dangerous but isn't.
@@CAMacKenzie Isn't the latter a "paper tiger"!?
@@adrianblake8876 纸虎也吗
@@埊 I don't understand Chinese (although I do know the idiom is originally from that language...)
Well, gummy bears don't grow in Finland either, but we have the phrase "Tasan ei käy nallekarkit" which literally translates to something like "Gummy bears aren't distributed equally", and practically means that things aren't always equal, life isn't always fair.
Oh man, this reminds me of when me and a few of my friends came up with a few of our own Swedish idioms; the best one probably being "Åka skridskor i uppförsbacke" (Eng: Ice skating up a hill).
It would mean "to make something unnecessarily difficult for oneself".
In Chinese, there's an idiom called "吹牛皮(blowing cowskin)", means talk big speak boastingly. Because the ancients blowing cowskin to make airbags for rafts. The cowskin are being blown out = The person's big words just too big and won't cut it....
.
That's just being a "windbag" or "full of hot air"...
2:18 I've heard, "You're talking out of your..." wrong end of the body, to mean, "You don't know what you're talking about." But no: "Bubbles."
That French snake idiom reminds me of the Dutch idiom "Er zit een addertje onder het gras", literally translated it means "There's a little viper under the grass". It means that something sounds very good, but there is something nasty that you won't see so easily, but which makes it all less good than it appears, or even downright terrible. An unofficial idiom derived from it is "Waar zit de adder?" meaning "Where is the viper?" It basically suggests that you already detected there's something nasty about something seeming so good, but that you don't yet now what the nasty thing is.
Now the wolf in sheep's clothes also exists in Dutch as "wolf in schaapskleren" which is a literal translation actually. "Een paar schroeven los" is actually also "a couple of scews loose". Both idioms are actually used in the same context.
I nice Dutch idiom is also "Maak dat de kat wijs". Literally translated (English Grammar be damned) it means "make that the cat wise". Now "wijsmaken" (lit. "make wise") means that someone made you believe a nonsensical story to be true (and that's why I came up with that faulty grammar version, as it's hard to translate correctly without losing the original context). So the Dutch idiom basically means that your story sounds so nonsensical that even the cat won't believe it.
There is also the variant "Maak dat de ganzen wijs", it means the same, only the cat has been replaced by geese.
Now a Dutch idiom I like is "Het slaat als een tang op een varken".
Literally translated it means: "It hits like a pair of thongs on a pig".
I guess that didn't make sense at all. Well that's precisely what it means.
"Unaware of the wiles of the snake in the grass,
And the fate of the maiden who topes,
She lowered her standards by raising her glass,
Her courage, her eyes, and his hopes."
--- Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, "Have some Madeira, M'Dear"
"You've got a screw loose" and "A kangaroo loose in the top paddock" are both great, but I prefer "You're a nut! You're crazy in the coconut!"
_Buggier than bat shit_
3:45 "to swallow grass snakes" would be like "cat got your tongue. "
An old work friend of mine COINED an idiom, in English, that I think should be in wide use. “Tell the microwave.” It’s specific, but perfect. It’s when you’re fighting an unwinable battle with someone of lesser intellect, like, “you might as well go plead your case to the microwave.” ✌🏼
Um, I wonder if it needs to be used by some type of regional or population compacity?
Have you looked into that?
If so how would you popularize the concept?
I think you have put some thought into this and have an interest in how you see things.
Sorry to disappoint you, but if nobody but your friend is using it, it's not an idiom. 😜 (It might, however, count as being part of your friend's "idiolect", which means an individual's own peculiar and unique version of their language.)
that is more a kin to "like liar looking for forgiveness from a stone" (21 guns by Green Day)
That makes no sense and we already have an idiom for that: "Talking to a wall"
My wife’s L1 Tagalog has a similar one: “Sabihin mo sa mga Marines.” Literally: “Tell it to the Marines,” it means I don’t believe you at all.
In Tagalog we have "kapit sa patalim" which directly translates to "grab on to the sharp blade." It means someone is desperate that they are willing to do dangerous and immoral things. It also have a note of hopelessness, that they are doomed even then.
There is some nuance here that is lost in translation. Kapit doesn't mean just to grab on but there is also a force that is pulling what you are grabing on to away from your grip and that bad results, or even death, would happen if you let go; like grabing on to someone's hand while you are dangling off a cliff. You can think of "kapit sa patalim" as someone holding on to a sharp blade as they hang over a cliff.
This sounds a bit like the english (I don't know if it's just in Britain?) expression : "by the skin of his teeth" or "hanging on by the skin of your teeth" I think it might be used in some similar situations, but I like the Tagalog one better. It sounds a lot more urgent!
“He’s got a death-grip on the sharp side of the sword” would slap actually.
@3:57 as someone who has had a garter snake for a pet, and I love them generally, this grass snake idiom fills me with horror. That is something I just would never want to do.
In Québec, we have an expression called "Enfirwhopper". It's a deformation of the English phrase, "Wrapped in fur" (lit. In fur- wrapped). It means that you were fooled, played by someone's flattery into believing they are on your side when they are not.
In Dutch, if you’re really sleepy, you could say “I’m falling off my stick,” meaning to invoke the imagery of a bird so sleepy it can’t even stay on its perch. Also, if you eat something that tastes very good, you could say “it’s like an angel is peeing on my tongue.” This comes from the idea that cherubs are supposed to pee sugar water.
Falling off the stick, trilla av pinn, means die in Swedish. :-) (birds normally cling to their stick in their sleep)
I recently heard one from South Africa. When one begins a venture with a large amount of money and continues to lose money rather than make a profit, they are said to be "farming backwards."
I also like “When chickens have teeth” for something that is very unlikely to happen
"Scarce as hen's teeth..."
For the duck-mentioning phrase: "You're absolutely quackers."
Yes, we do say "to put a cat on your head." I always wondered how they got that since it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I'm not japanese, but I assume the cat is ment to be cute and by this it distracts the people from it's wearer.
And... a cat on the head would mean like a ski mask covering the head.
"Cats aren't as awful as we make them out to be."
Immediately starts talking about Australia.
😢
Whenever we talk about idioms "it's time to put the cat on the table" (or "on the wall" or "on the wallpaper") because we're getting down to business and talking about something that is bothering us (note: a reference to a Finnish idiom and its three variants; originates from checking the sex of the cat).
finnish people sold cats to swedish people? thats why the divide was checked რა?
We used to say of excessively stupid people that they were "Probably smarter than grass."
If "a kangaroo loose in the top paddock" means "got a screw loose", then you really should have mentioned "having bats in the belfry". Is that one limited to the U.S.?
A Filipino idiom that struck me is "Itaga mo sa bato" - "Strike it in stone" which means: "Remember the promise or what was agreed upon". This is very similar to "Cast it in stone" in English.
I have a cat on my head right now. Her name is Hopper, she's very warm and fluffy
Tell that kitty she is best kitty.
In Brazil we have "gato escaldado tem medo de água fria" which cana be translated as "a cat that got burnt by boiling water will be afraid of cold water" and is used to say that someone is being over cautious because of a past trauma.
Sounds like Australia doesn't have too many belfries to keep their bats in.
Cows are not good on slippy surfaces , their feet are very hard horn and give them little grip on an impervious , firm surface. Smooth wet ( read covered in slurry) concrete can be deadly to large cattle.
There is no cow on the ice, as long as the butt is ashore.
(Der är ingen ko på isen, så länge rumpan är i land. )
I think calling someone a quack might be related to the duck idiom, but I'd have no idea other than similarity
It might be related to calling someone a "hack", too. Since the qu sound is gentler than the hard h, a quack is like a softer version of a hack. Someone doing a hack job makes a right mess of things. Someone doing a quack job is incompetent but not absolutely butchering it. Maybe.
@IcicleFerret I'll have to actually look into this now. That's a really good point
@IcicleFerret with just a basic Google I found this, "The term quack originates from quacksalver, or kwakzalver, a Dutch word for a seller of nostrums, medical cures of dubious and secretive origins." Intresting that we both arrived at answers unrelated to the original but still made sense. Speaks to the phrases longevity ig
About that duck blowing, which do Latvians. There is clay toy whistle with water i it in form of duck. Also they are without use of water - with some holes on sides - you can get various sounds. «Pūst pīlītes»
2:12
That idiom reminds me of the line in Pulp Fiction, where 1 character is saying something the other thinks is ridiculous, and the other says "you sound like a duck."
Just going off the title - in English "To play the innocent" in Mexican Spanish is "Like a man throwing stones" It took a friend of mine demonstrating it to get why they said it that way. TBH his demonstration was hilarious.
“Bains ki banana” songs for buffalo, Hindi idiom roughly meaning a waste of time/effort.
I don´t give a red shrimp for that, but not my circus, not my monkey...
2:13 I live in England and have never heard of
"Blowing bubbles," in that context.
Not sure this counts as an idiom exactly; but in German the word "nüchtern" means both "sober" (not intoxicated) and "fasting". Let me tell you, I was quite taken aback when a doctor in Austria, speaking to me in excellent but clearly not perfect English, chose the wrong translation and asked me, prior to drawing blood for a blood test, "Are you sober?"
(As an aside, I can't help but notice that the German word "sauber" means clean, pure, or unsoiled. It looks an awful lot like the English word "sober", but I don't know if they are etymologically related or if that's just a coincidence. But it would make a nice story if they were related and the English "sober" were likewise related to "cleanliness", since cleanliness in that sense could be the concept that ties together "sober" and "fasting".)
Aber warum muß man in Österreich Englisch sprechen?
@@alchang1515 Man muß nicht. Aber ich bin Americanisch, und mein Arzt konnte sehr gut Englisch, und er hat immer mit mir Englisch gesprochen. Was ich mochte sagen ist: wo Deutsch hat ein wort, Englisch hat zwei. Für ihm, sind die zwei gleich. Aber für mich, sind sie ganz unterschiedlich. Weil er Deutsch besser als Englisch konnte, hat er etwas sehr lustig auf Englisch gesagt! (Eigentlich war er niederländisch.)
And after challenging myself to figure out how to say that in German, I then took it to Google Translate, to see what it "thinks". I had it translate my German words back into English, and it understood me perfectly; but when I then flipped it to produce German from that text, it produced this seemingly more polished version. It even somehow guessed my gender correctly! Sharing this because maybe it's easier to understand than what I wrote myself. And because other translation nerds might be amused:
"Das müssen Sie nicht. Aber ich bin Amerikanerin, und mein Arzt sprach sehr gut Englisch, und er hat immer Englisch mit mir gesprochen. Was ich sagen wollte, ist: Wo Deutsch ein Wort hat, hat Englisch zwei. Für ihn sind die beiden gleich. Aber für mich sind sie sehr unterschiedlich. Weil er besser Deutsch als Englisch sprach, sagte er etwas sehr Lustiges auf Englisch! (Eigentlich war er Niederländer.)"
esplayyn wat sober meanz.
@@sharonminsuk It's worth noting that the verb _nüchten_ does mean fasting more narrowly. An English word that almost straddles the meanings is "abstaining": one normally abstains from a specific thing, such as alcohol, shellfish, or smoking, but abstaining from food for a stretch doesn't seem like too much of a semantic stretch.
The Austria-Netherlands connection reminds me of a German who lived in Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate, when the country was almost entirely closed to foreigners. From 1641, they allowed a single narrow exception for a Dutch enclave in Dejima. (An "artificial island" created at Nagasaki harbor by cutting a canal across a small peninsula.) In addition to all trade with the outside world, it was Japan's eye into Rangaku ('Dutch learning' -- i.e., western science, medicine, etc.) Only Dutch were allowed to live there, under tight supervision. In 1823, Philipp Franz von Siebold arrived there as physician-and-scientist (paid, as the shogunate required, by the Dutch East Indies Company). He was German, but passed himself (and his accent) off as "Mountain Dutch." (Absurd, yet reasonable in the broader sense of the Dutch/Teuton word. Especially as the Netherlands was then the only explicitly deutsches Land, afaik.)
My grandfather, born 1900, would say "I had to tell them how the cow ate the cabbage" Which could mean two things. 1 to tell a person the unvarnished truth, even if they would rather not hear it. 2 to state one’s opinion forcefully or to tell someone off.
One that I have been using for many years is the English translation of I think a Polish idiom: "Not my circus, not my monkeys." I use it at least a few times a week.
Also Australian, and one of this US-American's favorite, _A fart in a phone booth._
The meaning is obvious, but Dustin Hoffman used a version of this metaphor in _Rain Man._
Almost guaranteed to bring on the _technicolor yawn._
3:41 Aussies would say someone looks "like a stunned mullet" if they are flabbergasted or agape at what has been said to them.
Brazilian Portuguese: "meter o pé na jaca" (Stick your foot in the jackfruit) - overindulge, overspend, overdrink, overeat, over-etc.
The ducks coming out of the nose is so stinkin' adorable!
My best friend was Chinese and at times we compared sayings in our respective languages. I told him the english saying, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" (meaning the person who complains gets attention and help), and he told me the saying in Chinese was exactly the opposite, to wit, "the nail that stands up gets pounded down" - LOL
I was thinking of the French idiom, “(pardon the spelling) … repondez d’escalier …”, “… response of/from the stairs …”, as something, some zinger you should have said but didn’t think of till after you had left, as you were descending the stairs.
A common idiom in biblical Hebrew is "rested with his fathers" which means dying and being buried in the family cemetery.
The kangaroo one sounds like a variation of "bats in the bellfree".
We have a "I won't sit to shit on the same field as you" to indicate the unwillingness to cooperate
Have you heard: "Teach your grandmother to suck eggs" meaning "don't try to tell me what I already know" with an implied insult meaning "you come from a long line of weasels." Sure would like to know the origin of that one, which I heard in Nova Scotia some 50 years ago.
“A kangaroo loose in the top paddock” may relate to “bats in the belfry”. Live animals causing havoc in a “superior” enclosed space.
Old Aussie idioms of 'as mad as...' either 'a cut snake' or 'a meataxe'. The former option means dangerously angry, the latter, completely crazy.
1:05 nice idiom, wrong flag. It may be Spanish, but it's Latin American only; in fact, it's mostly Cuban (even Urban Dictionary has it as "Cuban slang"), but it has been exported to some Central American countries, Venezuela and, most recently, Peru. In Spain proper (where the flag points), the equivalents would be "se montó un pollo" ("a chicken got onto it", corruption of "se montó un poyo", "someone stood onto a stone bench [to make an inflammatory speech]"), "se armó la de San Quintín" ("there was a commotion like the one at St. Quentin's", in reference to an historical prison uprising) and "se armó la marimorena" ("marimorena" woud mean "tanned Mary", but it's suspected it's a mondegreen or corruption of a word or words from another language).
4:09 it's related to idioms in other Romance languages, but inverted; the opposite expression, "to spit out toads and grass snakes", means "to say profanities", usually in relation to a perceived insult, so when you are in a position where you would be shouting profanities, but you keep them inside (either by your will or due to the shock) it's like you are swallowing them instead of spitting them out.
In American English one of my favorites is 'even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then... usually shortened to even a blind squirrel finds a nut. Can be interpreted as , you are hopeless/ you are stupid/ are you really that blind dependent on context.
There was a fad in France for some years to eat asps as a sort of health food, I understand, to the point of driving some varieties to near extinction. Probably not related to the idiom.
We have one in spanish that my family uses a lot: "In the house of the blacksmith... wooden knives".
I've never heard of blowing bubbles.
Argentina/Uruguay:
"¡Cómo estará la cañada que el chancho la cruzó al trote!"
Literally
The creek got so shallow that even the pig could wade it trotting along!
meaning that
things got so unusually bad that someone did an unthinkable thing.
"As a ravine is such that a pig trots across it!"
In Thai, the word “เซ็งเป็ด” exists. “เซ็ง”mean bored or irksome but “เป็ด” means duck, which mean bored duck or duck bored if switched, but the problem is that I’m not sure if it was a idiom
What is Patrick's accent? Is the accent typical of a certain area in the UK? Thank you!
My favorite one in Tagalog (wife’s L1) is “May balat ako sa puwet.” Literally “I have a birthmark on my ass,” it means I generally have bad luck
There's a rather interesting Australian one I heard: "I'm not here to f*ck spiders" it's basically a rather colorful way to point out the obvious or to communicate that you're already doing something. Example one: you and a friend are at a bar and they ask you if you want a drink. Example two: someone asks if you're going to make dinner while you're clearly getting things prepped.
He, in Norway we also have the wolf in sheep clothing idiom. Maybe someone imported it a long long time ago? Maybe they all stem from the same sourse? Who knows! 🤷🏽♀️
"Sin moros en la costa", no moors on sight, it's the same meaning as "the coast is clear" in Spanish
most fascinating are idioms that are the same but aren't. like how in english you compare not an apple with oranges when in german you instead would never compare them so pears. like they are obviously the same idiom but somehow one of the fruits had an identity crisis and changed it's species
Quick Google search revealed an anime who's English name is A Whisker Away for this phrase. 5:04