It could also just be English if you only speak English.
“Jeg bryr meg katta”
literally “I care like a cat”, meaning “I don’t care in the slightest and talking more about it is an insult to my time”.
It’s fallen mostly out of use, but I’m hanging on.
are you perchance Norwegian? jeg lærer norsk (faren min er norsk, det er teknisk sett andrespråket mitt men jeg bruker det ikke mye. nå jeg lærer mer)
hvis du er dansk, jeg beklager at forveksler de to, men hvis du er norsk, det er hyggelig å se folk som snakker språket
glem det, dansk bruker “mig”. jeg glemte
Hehe. Selv om vi nordmenn er litt brutale i språket og ofte tolkes som uhøflige, så betyr «ikke bry deg» noe sånt som «mind your own business». «Glem det» (never mind) fungerer kanskje bedre.
tusen takk! jeg har hørt „nieważne” i polsk også, som betyr “det er ikke viktig”, og jeg tror at det er «неважно» med samme betydning
Muntlig ville jeg nok brukt det. «(det er) ikke så viktig, kom på at ….»
fra min forståelse, du kan si det når du sa noe, personen hørte det ikke.
«Co?» (Hva/Hæ?) «Nieważne» (Det er ikke viktig, glem det)
Haha, ikke noe problem. Godt observert!
That’s such a cool phrase though
Here’s one in Egyptian Arabic: “He who gets burnt by soup will blow on yoghurt”, meaning that someone who gets hurt once will bexome careful not to repeat the experience.
I really like this! Getting burnt so bad that you’d blow on something cold like ice out of fear.
There’s a very similar version in Spanish
El que con leche se quema, hasta al jocoque le sopla
He who gets burnt by milk will blow on jocoque
Made me think of the (ptpt/ptbr) saying “Quem com ferro fere, com ferro será ferido” - Who hurts with iron, shall be hurt with iron
In French we have “a burned cat fear cold water” (chat échaudé craint l’eau froide)
We have a similar one in Bulgarian too: “Парен каша духа” - roughly the same thing, but without explicitly mentioning youghurt.
I don’t speak German, but I picked up a few phrases for work. They have a few idioms that I think of sometimes:
“Ich glaub, ich spinne” which means I think I’m crazy, but literally translates to “I think, I spider.” It’s a great visual metaphor, being overwhelmed by the threads going everywhere that you imagine you’re a spider spinning a web, and also you’ve entirely forgotten grammar.
“Bahnhof verstehen” or “Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof” means “I understand only the train station.” It’s something you say when you don’t understand anything, you’re completely lost, and you don’t give a shit becaue you just want to get the fuck home.
I might be off on those translations or the subtext, but that’s how I understood it.
and also you’ve entirely forgotten grammar.
That’s a misinterpretation. The German “spinne” is a proper verb in that sentence, like “to spin” in English.
So it can be what a spider does, but also what political doctors do, and the latter is the context here?
The “Bahnhof verstehen” comes from the notion that many people learning a foreign language start with some simple sentences like “Can you tell me the way to the train station”. So people who only “Bahnhof verstehen” (OK, horrible grammar here) have not proceed past the first lesson.
My understanding is that is came from soldiers returning from WWI who did not speak enough German to communicate, but were seeking the trains home.
Not fluent at all, but I always parsed “Ich glaub, ich spinne” as “I feel like my head is spinning”
No, it’s not “spin” like a top or top be dizzy. There’s a bunch of meanings, and some are similar to those two, but none fit for dizzy.
“Head is spinning” is a metaphor. Literally tanslating metaphors doesn’t usually work, which is why this thread is interesting
In colloquial English, you can say that someone is an idiot with the construction “you absolute [noun]” or “you complete [noun]” or similar.
It doesn’t actually matter what the noun is, but it works better the more obscure or specific the thing is. For example “you absolute saucepan”, “you complete hose pipe”, or my personal favourite “you absolute strawberry plant”.
One of my favorite youtubers Octavius King demonstrates this really well by using “complete and utter desk” as a derogatory term for the worst offenders to intellect.
In this line of thought I like how “tool” is something useful in its primary meaning, but derogatory when used about a person.
Sort of, there is a parallel derivation where tool can be an innuendo for penis (“used his tool”), so describing someone as a tool is a slightly less vulgar way of calling someone a dick; unrefined, rude, obnoxious.
Yeah, fair point. Thanks for explaining. Not a native speaker, so I kind of forgot about that.
No worries - I’m a native, but still had to think about it a bit. English is weird
In Khmer, there’s a phrase “មិនដឹងខ្យល់” which literally translates to “Doesn’t know wind” as in they’re so dumb they don’t even know what wind is.
I guess it’s kind of like calling someone an air head but from a different angle.
“Correo de las brujas” translates to “the witches’ mail” and means gossip or rumors. Kind of like “heard it through the grapevine” or a “a little birdie told me”
Two that are related to falling
猿も木から落ちる [Even] monkeys fall out of trees [too]. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you’ll always get it right.
七転び八起き Fall down 7 times, get up 8. Pretty self-explanatory
Fall down 7 times, get up 8.
But you’ll have to fall down an 8th time if you want to get up again 🤔
此地无银三百两—literally “this location does not hide 15kg of silver”. imagine a sign saying that with an arrow pointing downwards
What does that mean?
At a guess, to call attention to something by trying to hide it
Sounds much like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
“Das geht mir am Arsch vorbei.”
German for I don’t give a damn about that.
Literally: it passes by my ass.
You can also lift it up to a SFW level by saying “Das geht mir hinten vorbei.” (It passes behind me), or strengthen it with “Das geht mir weit hinten vorbei.” (It passes far behind me).
Or, if you wanna sound intellectual: „Das tangiert mich peripher.“
- Flat out like a lizard drinking
- We’re not here to fuck spiders
- As dry as a dead dingo’s donger
- Forty cents short of a shout
- A few kangaroos loose in the top paddock
What does we’re not here to fuck spiders refer to?
Besides the literal
It implies we are here to do something more productive than fucking spiders
We’re not here to fuck spiders
Borrowing this one
An example as if I was talking to you: “I’ll wack you like an octopus” which technically already describes the action, however traditionally in my country after catching octopus in order to properly kill them and soften them up, fishermen basically smack/wacked them on the ground maniacally.
And I think it’s become such a popular figure of speech because that mental image is hilarious and I love using it.
What language is that in, English? :)
Greek
Βεβαίως
Ποια άλλη να’ ταν;
Esperanto
krokodili- verb, literally something like “to crocodile”
It means when an Esperanto-speaker speaks in a language other than Esperanto while amongst other Esperanto-speakers.
No one’s quite sure why that’s the term for it, most likely because crocodiles have a big mouth.
When I learned that, it suddenly made a lot of sense why Duolingo taught me the word for “crocodile” so early.
Are there really esperato speakers in the wild (not just Duolingo?) It would be a fun language to learn, but if no one speaks i’d rather just get better at german :)
You’re mustard
English. It’s a good thing, means the person is awesome.
You’re mustard for teaching me this!
“Butt fuck Egypt (BFE),” when referring to being in the middle of nowhere or the far edges of a parking area. For example, Sally complained to her friend in the food court, “I had to park all the way in BFE. I’m dreading the walk back to the car.”
Nice. In German we have “am Arsch der Welt”, lit. translating to “at the arse of the world” to refer to the middle of nowhere
English has “the arse end of nowhere” too. Wir sind alle gleich.
In portuguese, we also like to say “where Judas lost his boots”
Bruh where is this?
New England, at least. BFE is half the state of Maine, but also the furthest spots in the Hannaford parking lot.
Growing up in the Midwest, I’ve heard BFE countless times.
We use “bum fuck nowhere” in Michigan, at least in my experience.
Why Egypt specifically? I’ve heard the phrase bumfuck nowhere before.
I think it’s just a reference to being very far away from the speaker’s main area of residence. Plus it just rolls off the tongue delightfully.
That’s actually quite an interestingly accurate one, considering that something like 95% of Egyptians live near the Nile River, and anywhere that is NOT near the Nile is desert wasteland.
Other accurate analogies would be anywhere in Canada that is NOT near its’ southern border, or nearly anywhere/everywhere in inland Australia, they call it the Outback for a reason.
前世害左你么？(In Cantonese/Taishanese)
Did I hurt you in your previous incarnation?
Parents always say this when they get mad.
I guess it translate to “What did I do in my previous life to deserve a shitty kid like you?”
So a round-about way of just saying trash-talking their kid basically.
I always respons, “So why did you hurt me in my my previous life?”
Or “Yea you hur me in my previous life and I reincarnated here for revenge” 🤣
(Who the fucked coined that phrase, why is reincarnation brought up wtf lol)
