In Latvian that Texas saying would come out as, "He has spurs but no horse."
I found a whole bunch of Hungarian proverbs, here's a couple:
Egyszer volt Budán kutyavásár
There was a dog-market in Buda only once
A favourable opportunity that only happens once
Felfelé bukott
He stumbled upwards
The English version is "He was kicked upstairs"
Joanne -- of course you can use Texasspeak! It's a foreign language, ain't it? I've had to learn it over the years. Now I even know what expressions like "It don't make no never mind" mean.
When a person in new england, maybe just massachusetts, wants to do a u-turn they say they're going to "Bang a Uey".
I know I learned some interesting idioms in Italy, but I can't remember any of them.
In Noo Zeelund if they're off to
'bang a Uey' you don't want to know about it
Australian English has a wealth of expressions, I can't even start to lsit them. However, one of my favourites is:
"I'm so hungry I could eat a baby's bum through a wicker chair".
Italian idioms? I happen to know quite a few.
Among my favorites:
Fare il portoghese (Pretend to be Portuguese): to cheat (like not paying the bus fare, for instance).
The anecdote goes as follows: it seems that after some disaster in Portugal, the Portuguese embassy in Rome was giving free tickets to Portugal for people worried about their relatives. A lot of Romans showed at the embassy, pretending to be Portuguese and asking for the ticket.
Dare la gettatura (To give the throw away): to give bad luck, to curse.
In medieval times, 6 o'clock in the afternoon was the time for the "jettatura": the throwing out of debris to the street. If you happened to pass, at that sorry hour, by a window, you were on risk of having all kinds of human waste thrown upon.
'Soft as a Grape' was the funniest Massachusetts one I heard when I arrived here
I mean..grapes arent soft..right????
And actually the meaning is beind 'soft' as not solid
SO WHAT THE HECK DOES THE GRAPE HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING??
<shakin my head>
bunch o bangin a Uie whackos I tell ya
Another texas idiom
What does it mean when you say
you're like a one legged man/woman at a butt kicking contest.
In northern Britain, an ugly woman (very ugly) is said to have "A face like a bag of spanners".
A very grumpy, sour person could have "a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp".
McT
That's a good 'un, Seaglass. A one-legged man in a butt-kickin' contest obviously would be in no position to kick any butt. Love it.
But, back to the original premise, how would one translate that into a truly foreign idion? Is there a comparable phrase in Italian or Spanish? In Portuguese? I'm racking my brain for something that would mean the same thing in Latvian and coming up empty. (Being as how it's my brain, coming up empty is no surprise.)
Mr. McTag,
Please what is a spanner.
Seaglass -- a spanner is what we 'Murricans call a 'wrench', sometimes known as a 'monkey wrench.'
McTag wrote:In northern Britain, an ugly woman (very ugly) is said to have "A face like a bag of spanners".
In Oz there's 2 variations of that.
"Face like a hat full of armpits", or the more vulgar "Face like a hat full of assholes"
But it's not exclusive to women.
I'm having a good time listening and will be back with some of my own.
I can't remember an idiom in either Spanish or Italian like the one-legged man in the butt-kicking contest.
The nearest could be this Spanish saying:
Como el maestro Ciruela, no sabe leer y pone escuela
Like Professor Plum, who can't read and puts a school.
A Mexican idiom for a person with a grumpy face, would be cara de huelepedos (fartsmelling face: I guess we have a problem with gasses, must be the food).
