Want to flatter a German? Tell him his suit fits like a backside on a bucket!
Just one of the weird and wonderfully colourful phrases other nations favour, as MARK MASON reveals
WHEN it’s ‘raining chair legs’, as the Greeks say, don’t you wish you were ‘snug as a cockerel in pastry’ — as the French call a bug who’s toasty in a rug? Languages around the world all have their own wonderfully evocative idioms — those weird ways of expressing things that make perfect sense to native speakers, but which baffle foreigners. Here, MARK MASON picks some common English phrases and their wackiest international equivalents . . .
Like a fish out of water
Venezuelan Spanish: Like a cockroach at a chicken dance
Levantine Arabic: Like a deaf person at a wedding procession Irish: Like a jackdaw among peacocks Spanish: Like an octopus in a garage German: Like a cow in front of a new door
When hell freezes over
Turkish: When fish climb poplar trees Bosnian: When grapes ripen on the willow Croatian: On St Nobody’s day Italian: In the year of never and the month of then
Russian: When a crayfish whistles on the hilltop Dutch: When you weigh an ounce Thai: One afternoon in your next reincarnation
Pull their leg
Spanish: Pull their hair Finnish: Pull their nose Czech: Hang balls on their nose Russian: Hang noodles on their ears French: Put them in a box German: Sell them a bear
Beat around the bush
Maltese: Go around the almond Italian: Lead the dog around the garden
Norwegian and Swedish: Walk like a cat around hot porridge Xhosa: The goat is rubbing itself against the corner of the house
Make a mountain out of a molehill
German: Make an elephant out of a mosquito Danish: Make five hens out of a feather Polish: Make a pitchfork out of a needle
Portuguese: Make a storm in a glass of water
Don’t count your chickens until they hatch
German: Don’t praise the day before the evening
Spanish, Dutch, Russian: Don’t sell the bear’s skin before you’ve shot it Turkish: Don’t roll your pants up until you see the stream
Born with a silver spoon in your mouth
Swedish: Slid in on a prawn sandwich
Japanese: Never lifted anything heavier than chopsticks
Millstone round your neck
French: Saucepans hanging from your backside
The middle of nowhere
German: Where the rabbit and the fox say goodnight Polish: Where the dogs bark with their backsides Danish: Where the crows turn back Finnish: Behind God’s back Central American Spanish: Where the devil left his jacket behind Fly in the ointment
German: Rabbit in the pepper French: Testicle in the soup
Raining cats and dogs
Afrikaans: Raining old women with knobkerries. (A knobkerrie is a type of club used as a weapon.) Danish: Raining cobbler boys Dutch: Raining pipe stems Greek: Raining chair legs Portuguese: Raining toads’ beards
Set the cat among the pigeons
Dutch: Throw the bat into the chicken shed French: Throw a cobblestone into the pond Russian: Let a goat into the garden
Snug as a bug in a rug
German: As snug as a maggot in bacon
French: As snug as a cockerel in pastry
As easy as falling off a log
French: Able to do it with your fingers in your nose Korean: As easy as lying on your back and eating rice cakes
Bats in the belfry
German: A titmouse under the hat Portuguese: Monkeys in the attic Australia: A kangaroo loose in the top paddock French: A spider on the ceiling Croatian: Cows have drunk your brain
It’s all Greek to me
Spanish: It’s all Chinese to me French: It’s all Hebrew to me
Polish: It’s a Turkish sermon German: I only understand ‘train station’ or: It’s Spanish to me
A leopard can’t change its spots
Swabian German: You can’t turn a farm horse into a racehorse Arabic: The dog’s tail stays crooked even if you put it in 50 moulds German: The cat will always chase the mice
Kyrgyz: It doesn’t matter how well you feed the wolf, it always looks at the forest
Russian: Only the grave will cure the hunchback
A bad workman blames his tools
Russian: Don’t blame a mirror for your ugly face
Sting in the tail
Italian: Not all doughnuts come out with a hole Arabic: You’ve broken your fast with an onion Icelandic: There’s a raisin at the end of the hotdog
Kill two birds with one stone
Polish: Roast two pieces of meat on one fire Italian: Catch two pigeons with one fava bean
Indonesian: While diving, drink water
Can’t sing for toffee
Croatian: You sing like an elephant farted in your ear
It’s no use crying over spilt milk
French: The carrots are cooked
Kick the bucket
Finnish: Throw the spoon into the corner (or throw your crankshaft, or straighten your legs)
Fits like a glove
German: Fits like a backside on a bucket
He’s a spitting image of …
Azerbaijani: He fell from their nose when they were blowing it
Don’t cast pearls before swine
Portuguese: Don’t feed cake to the donkey
Break a leg (for good luck)
Italian: Into the mouth of a wolf
Out of the frying pan, into the fire
Finnish: Out of the ditch, into the duck pond
Down in the dumps
Danish: Down in the coal cellar German: Standing there like a soaked poodle French: Have the cockroach Norwegian: Painting the devil on the wall
Azerbaijani: Like an Arab with a dead camel
Pushing up daisies
French: Eating dandelions by the roots
What goes around comes around
Croatian: The cat comes to the tiny door
More than one way to skin a cat
Finnish: ‘The ways are many,’ said the woman wiping the table with a cat
Buy a pig in a poke
German: Buy a cat in a sack
Like pulling teeth
Finnish: Like drinking tar
As blind as a bat
Spanish: Couldn’t see three people on a donkey
To go nowhere fast
French: To pedal in the sauerkraut. (This isn’t because of sauerkraut’s texture – it’s because in early Tour de France races, the lorries collecting stragglers often bore ads for sauerkraut)
Easier said than done
Russian: Your elbow is close, but you can’t bite it
Keep your chin up
German: Keep your ears stiff
Coulda, woulda, shoulda
German: Coulda, woulda, bike chain. (It rhymes in German)
Everything comes to an end
German: Everything has one end, only the sausage has two
Your flies are open
Finnish: The horses are running away