The Illustrated Book of Sayings: Curious Expressions from Around the World by Ella Frances Sanders
My rating: 4/5 cats
To feel like an octopus in a garage – Spanish
another book by the woman who wrote Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World, which i recently reviewed here.
this one involves 52 idioms from different languages instead of single words, which is a fantastic idea, since every language has idioms that are just plain crazytown, and it’s fun to check out other cultures through their idioms and wonder just what the heck they mean and where they came from. english is full of idioms that seem nonsensical, but they’re so much a part of common exchange, i personally don’t spend too much time thinking about their origins or marveling at how odd they are, so books like these remind me to be more conscious of things i just say without even registering their linguistic oddity or imagery.
Some days honey, some days onions – Arabic
although i am not at all surprised that this is a swedish saying, as i am well aware how much the swedes value sandwiches:
Sliding in on a shrimp sandwich – Swedish
in the last book, she transliterated the words, but in this one, they appear in their original script. i think if she does a third book, i would like to see it with both, as well as a handy pronunciation guide. i definitely like seeing the saying in its original, but i got zero chance of ever stumbling on how to pronounce this:
To wear a cat on your head – Japanese
nor can i pronounce unfamiliar foreign words even when i do recognize the letters:
To pace around hot porridge like a cat – Finnish
and i do so want to use some of these, especially this one:
Not my circus, not my monkeys – Polish
and i know the internet is a wonderful place to learn things like this, but i am a lazy-face, and i can’t go skipping all over the world wide web just to learn how to pronounce stuff. that’s what books are for!
in the review for the last book, i gave the picture, the word, and the definition, but because these involve more detailed explanations, this time i think i’m just going to let the pictures and the idioms speak for themselves. which is frustrating, but those of you who are less lazy than i am can surely discover their meanings for yourselves.
having JUST said that, there are a couple i will explain, because i want to discuss them a bit:
To feed a donkey sponge cake – Portuguese
which is an idiom analogous to ‘casting pearls before swine.’ i understand the intention, but look at how happy that donkey is with that sponge cake! much happier than a pig confronted with some oyster-wart. it seems like feeding a donkey sponge cake would be a totally worthwhile act! this idiom is broken!
and
I will eat your liver – Farsi
this one i like because it seems so sinister and threatening, but in usage, it’s actually quite sweet – equivalent examples the book gives are, “I could just eat you up,” or “You are my heart,” or “I would do anything for you.” but it’s much more badass in farsi and makes me think of The Taste of a Man.
many of these involve animals in some way, so points for that:
Even monkeys fall from trees – Japanese
Who saw the peacock dance in the jungle? – Hindi
Into the mouth of the wolf! – Italian
To travel as a rabbit – Finnish
In a river full of piranhas, caiman swim on their backs – Brazilian Portuguese
The bear dances there! – German
and apart from the english one included which does not count, there were only two i’d ever encountered before:
I’m on the pig’s back – Irish
and
I’m returning to my sheep – French
now i will leave you with two opportunities to make LGM jokes:
To blow little ducks – Latvian
and
It’s blowing half a pelican – Danish
other languages included are:
Dutch, Korean, Serbian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Mandarin, Kashmiri, Australian English, Hebrew, Maltese, Ga, Yiddish, Tibetan, Mongolian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Czech, Russian, Turkish, Armenian, Norwegian, Swahili, Colombian Spanish, Igbo, Filipino, and Aromanian.
so, another fun word-nerd book to file away in the “holidays are approaching” portion of your mind.
