Foreign Idioms
English
Italian
Naked as a jaybird
Naked as a silkwork
to kill two birds with one stone
to catch two pigeons with one bean
to go by fits and starts
to go by Hiccups
English
(Nudo come un verme)
French
Don't waist your breath
Save your Saliva
to turn up like a bad penny
to arrive like a hair in the soup
Lets get back to the subject
Lets get back to our sheep
He laughs in your face
He laughs in your nose
Rule of thumb
from the view of the nose
English
Spanish
to hit the ceiling
to scream at the sky
Go fly a kite
go fry asparagus
to slam to door on your face
to slam to door on your own nostrils
To be alive and kicking
to be alive and wagging your tail
English
Yiddish
Go jump in the lake
Go whistle in the ocean
He repeats himself
he go grinds ground flower
Are you in a hurry?
Are you standing on one leg?
Go fight City Hall
Go fight with God
Thanks for nothing
Many thanks in your belly button
Source: http://www.forwardgarden.com/forward/1092.html
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.
Idioms
It isn’t always the nonnative speaker’s accent (which may be perfect) that enables people
to recognize instantly an outsider who is learning their language—it’s the odd mistakes
that no native speaker would make. The idiomatic use of words such as to, for, and with
varies from language to language. Just as each person has a unique, characteristic
signature, each language has unique idioms. In fact, the word idiom comes from the Greek
root idio, meaning a unique signature. Thus, each language contains expressions that
make no sense when translated literally into another tongue. The humorist Art Buchwald
wrote a famous column, often reprinted, in which he translated some of our Thanksgiving
(Mercidonnant) terms into literal French, with comic results. If a German or Spaniard or
Italian literally translated birthday suit and get down to brass tacks, the terms would make
no sense, or the wrong sense. Even a native speaker of English who is not used to hearing
literate idioms such as fits and starts, cock-and-bull story, hue and cry, and touch and go
will not be able to make sense of them. Our purpose in defining these idioms is to let the
cat out of the bag for those who haven’t heard them often enough to catch their meanings.
Other idioms are really allusions or foreign-language terms that make no sense unless
you know what the allusions or terms mean. Carry coals to Newcastle translates
adequately into any language, but it makes no sense to a person who doesn’t know that
Newcastle is a coal-mining city. Knowing the literal meaning of idioms won’t enable you
to understand them unless you also know what they allude to. Such ignorance is an
Achilles’ heel and an albatross around one’s neck. Moreover, just knowing a baker’s
dozen of them is not enough; you have to know them en masse. Educators who complain
about the illiteracy of the young but pay no attention to teaching idioms are just weeping
crocodile tears. We have therefore decided to cut the Gordian knot by systematically
defining some of the most widely used idioms in American literate culture.
—E.D.H.
Source: http://www.bartleby.com/59/4/
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