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 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?
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
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
‘To go nowhere fast’ in French is ‘to pedal in the sauerkraut’ – this is because in early Tour de France races, the lorries collecting stragglers often bore ads for sauerkraut
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
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
Languages around the world all have their own wonderfully evocative idioms – things that make perfect sense to native speakers, but which baffle foreigners (file photo)
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
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
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
The famous English phrase ‘easier said than done’ almost translates into Russian, but not quite – ‘your elbow is close, but you can’t bite it’
Your flies are open
Finnish: The horses are running away
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
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
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
As blind as a bat
Spanish: Couldn’t see three people on a donkey