In Wales, when it's raining hard, we say 'Mae'n bwrw hen wragedd â ffyn', which translates to 'It's raining old ladies with sticks'.
In Afrikaans, if you're going to give someone what-for, you tell them 'Ek sal jou wys waar Dawid die wortels begrawe het!' which translates to 'I'll show you where David buried the carrots!'
What are some fun idioms from your language?
Another fun one in Welsh is 'berwi fel cawl pys', translated to 'boiling like pea soup', which you say when someone's talking a lot 😂
@WelshPixie so is this constantly said? :P I find Welsh people, especially from the valleys here, talk quite quickly and at every fraction-of-a-second pause. X,x
My poor, slow brain.
@archadia Haha, yeah. I talk too fast too XD
@elomatreb @WelshPixie and isn't that the wurst
@WelshPixie @DialMforMara @elomatreb
At the same time we say "Das is mir Wurst." for "Das ist mir egal." = I don't care about this.
I also just realised it a moment before tooting, tbh.
@kafkaesqueNomad @WelshPixie @DialMforMara @elomatreb Isn't there a phrase for "I don't understand what's they're saying" that's sausage based too?
Etymology is from donkeys being afraid of water, and to get them to cross rivers you have to build bridges that don't allow them to see the water
@elomatreb Hah :D
@WelshPixie
In german, when you figured something out, you can say "Das ist des Pudels Kern", which means "that's the Poodle's core"
@Mopsitravels @WelshPixie omg is that why operating systems have kernels?
@DialMforMara @Mopsitravels @WelshPixie well, the kernel / core thing is, i believe, etymologically ~the same?
idk if it's because of floofy doggos, tho..... 🤔
@Mopsitravels @WelshPixie Don't forget to say that it refers to Goethe's Faust! (It does, doesn't it?)
@hinterwaeldler @Mopsitravels @WelshPixie most probably (the poodle in Faust turns out to be Mephistoteles. So that poodle's core is the devil)
@hinterwaeldler
Basically all german idioms do XD
@WelshPixie
@Mopsitravels @WelshPixie Which is a reference to Goethe's Faust...
@ckeen
Most german idioms are references to goethe.
@WelshPixie
@Mopsitravels @WelshPixie That's a quote from Goethe's Faust. It's what Faus said after a poodle turned out to be Mephistopheles in diguise.
@WelshPixie "hakn a tschaynik," "banging a teapot," rattling on and on, for instance as a sales pitch.
A ridiculously southern, American phrase is if you're doing/saying something audaciously in public (being lewd on main qualifies here), you're doing it "in front of God and everyone."
@WelshPixie "Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys", meaning "not my problem."
It's a literal translation of "Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy" from Polish, but the translation is a live idiom in English now.
@Nentuaby @WelshPixie "when the cancer at the top of the mountain whistles" - "unlikely to ever happen"
@oreolek @Nentuaby @WelshPixie
German expressions of surprise:
"Ich glaub mein Schwein pfeift" - I think my pig is whistling.
"Ich glaub mich knutscht ein Elch" - I think a moose is kissing me.
#German
I'm afraid I only have one more german idiom to share.
Whereas the English (or American??) dead are still productive, "pushing up the daisies", our deceased are more observative, "looking at the radishes from below."
"[xxx] sieht sich jetzt die Radieschen von unten an."
@kafkaesqueNomad @welshpixie We (Americans) also have "worm food."
Which I suppose is productive in its own way.
@kafkaesqueNomad
Hungarians like to nap down below, too: “alulról szagolja az ibolyát”, or “smelling violets from below”.
@WelshPixie
@kafkaesqueNomad @WelshPixie
Also the German version of "biting the dust" is "biting the grass" - ins Gras beißen
Tsatnosk
@WelshPixie "[there's] no cow on the ice" and "there's owls in the bog".
Both danish, meaning "no problems" and "something's wrong" respectively. Denmark is a cold and wet place, apparently.
@zatnosk
In german you get the cow off the ice, when you resolve a situation, that could have beek critical 
@WelshPixie
@zatnosk @WelshPixie Speaking of ice: "Dem geht der Arsch auf Grundeis" - literally about "his arse is hitting anchor ice", means "he's afraid"
#German
@WelshPixie "Occupe toi de tes oignons" in French is "Go take care of your onions". That's our "mind your own business".
We also have a less insulting way of saying GTFO, "Va te faire cuire un oeuf", meaning "Go fry yourself an egg"
@WelshPixie "Up to my ass in alligators." == "Something terrible has happened and I can't spare time for anything else."
@WelshPixie
In german, when you have a song stuck in your head you have an earworm!
@Mopsitravels Ah I know that one in English too :D
@WelshPixie A student I work with just taught me "goat rodeo" which her mom uses for a super chaotic situation.
@WelshPixie @compostablespork The etymology of that one is fun, too. It turns out it comes from an older term, "goat-roping", where "roping" is a euphemistic substitution for the word most of English's euphemistic substitutions are for. That meant "(an) incompetent (person.)"
"Goat rodeo," then, is a an extension to mean a situation where a whole bunch of goat-ropers are roping up all at once. :)
@Nentuaby @WelshPixie I think I should not tell this to my student who said she uses it because it's a lot more comfortable than "cluster fck" which is basically what I think you're saying it means...
@compostablespork @WelshPixie Mmm-hmm. It's multiple layers of roundabout, with that fun little twist of extending it in scale along the literal axis instead of the metaphorical one; but ultimately it does run pretty darn close to "clusterf***".
@WelshPixie If you want interesting idioms, I recommend looking up a list of Chinese "chengyu." They're four-character idioms, usually references to folklore, and they're your answer to people who tell you Darmok is unrealistic.
@WelshPixie In a similar vein, I enjoy the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshower#Folkloric_names
@aschmitz Ah yeah, @warpgate9 told me about the Afrikaans one :D
Fun idioms (alcohol mention) Show more
@WelshPixie In Esperanto, someone who speaks another language when Esperanto would be more appropriate is called a krokodilo -- a crocodile.
@WelshPixie
A little of topic, but there are interesting phrases for time in german:
Quarter past two is called quarter three
Half past two is called half three and
Quarter to three is called three quarter three
Although most people today will not understand "quarter three" but the other two, which is really odd 😄
@WelshPixie
It's really odd, but "half three" is the most common, "three quarter three" is less common and I've only ever heard my grandma say "quarter three"
They are pretty consistent phrases though...
I didn't understand those for the loooongest time, until about the nerdiest person I knew back then told me that while "measuring time in fractions is so deeply bavarian," his family just won't understand why he'd like to study mathematics.
So thanks to his non-nerdy relatives I now understand german time!
Took me 18 years until someone happened to explain it the nerdy way.
@WelshPixie in Portuguese we have:
"the place where Judas lost his boots" = middle of nowhere
"seven dogs at a bone" = a very competitive environment/situation
"counting the eggs in the chicken's ass" = making plans assuming the outcome of something will be positive (perhaps too positive)
"the color of a donkey as it is running away" = some undefined/unrecognizable color
"beating the boots" = passing away
"making brick" = being dead
"making worm" = also being dead
@megfault @WelshPixie we’d say “Counting your chickens before they’ve hatched” but I like eggs in the arse way better!
I wonder how many things I say would be local to NZ 🤔
@megfault @WelshPixie making worm is my fav
@WelshPixie I only really know English, but I love "raining cats and dogs" (be careful not to step in a poodle!)