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
Haha, ikke noe problem. Godt observert!
That’s such a cool phrase though
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
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.
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 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
“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.“
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 :)
There’s an expression in French, “enculage de mouches”. Literally means “fucking flies in the ass” and, figuratively, refers to being impossibly pedantic and nitpicky. Closest equivalent in English would be “splitting hairs” I think
Oh we got that here too “flue knepperi” fly fucking
“Lukee kuin piru Raamattua” (Finnish).
Literally “to read like the Devil reads the Bible”.
Meaning to examine something in bad faith. Never heard it used it in context of the Bible or anything religious, but eg. when interpreting law or contract, looking for the details that could be twisted for your purpose, rather than what the text attempts to convey.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;
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On ne peut pas avoir le beurre et l’argent du beurre (We can’t have the butter and the butter’s money)
This one would be the French equivalent of “You can’t eat cake and have it”
Tomber dans les pommes (Falling in apples)
This is an expression to describe fainting
Tailler une pipe (Carving a pipe)
Give a blowjob
I only just realized the pun inside “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
Most people complain that it’s a pointless idiom because if you possess a cake, you are likely able to eat it.
Having cake is another way of saying eating cake. It’s saying you can’t eat your cake and then eat your cake again.
It’s saying you can’t eat your cake and then eat your cake again.
I read this like “have it on the shelf” . One can’t save money and still spend it.
You’re mustard
English. It’s a good thing, means the person is awesome.
You’re mustard for teaching me this!
When I was young, myself and a group of friends were being accosted by a disheveled man on our walk home from the bar. We didn’t really understand what he was saying, but we were able to discern one phrase, as he told us to “Put the pussy on a chain wax”
We had no idea what it meant, and thought it was hilarious, so we’d oft repeat it at random.
Thinking about it now, I suddenly realize what he meant. He was referring to the woman in our group, telling us to pimp her out, by putting her up against a chain-link fence that were so plentiful in rough neighborhoods where we grew up.
So now I’m telling you, so that if you ever encounter this gentleman, you’ll know what he’s talking about 😶👍
If you ever see that guy, you better draxx them sclounce!
