Questa volta abbiamo cercato una domanda rivolta alle donne.Multilingual women of MassimoL, what are some idioms from non-English languages that you like?
Ed ecco le risposte del genere femminile:
In Cantonese, you say “three-legged cat doing kung fu” to describe someone’s half-assed incompetent efforts.
Came here looking for Spanish, but I’m the only one?
“Mejor Sola que Mal acompañada, ” meaning better alone than in bad company. I live by this.
“Nu har du skitit i det blå skåpet”
“Now you’ve taken a shit in the blue cupboard”
Means “now you have gone to far” ore “now you have made a fool of yourself”
I love “Se me olvidó” in Spanish.
Instead of active voice saying “I forgot” it’s in passive voice, more like “It was forgotten to me.”
The English way makes it sound like there’s intention in forgetting something. The Spanish represents (I think) a clearer representation or reality. We don’t choose to forget things–it just happens sometimes.
>Onni ettei ollut sakset, sanoi mummo, kun puukko silmään putosi
This is a Finnish and it translates as:
>It’s lucky I don’t have scissors, said grandma, when the knife fell in her eye
It sort of means to make the best of a bad situation, or to look on the bright side.
My favourite one:
As context, for those who are not familiar with the expression in English, “eye candy” means that someone is attractive and pleasant to look at. Like you’re indulging by looking at them.
In Spanish (in Mexico at least), the expression is “taco de ojo”. It means “eye taco”.
Gay kaken ofn yahm. Yiddish for go shit in a lake.
Arabic has great insults:
May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.
—Akritkan da bhaar dharti vi nahi sehndi — Punjabi
“Even earth doesn’t accept the weight of ungratefulness.” Basically, you should always be grateful for what you have.
The one I use most often is “Je suis dans les patates”. It’s a French Canadian phrase that basically means “I screwed up”. It comes up a lot in French class.