The twins are speaking in tongues again. I swear, its like hearing different languages, or different species. They do a scratchy pirate voice, a numbingly high-pitched dolphin squeal, and a squawking duck sound, to name a few. The girls have got range, that’s for sure.
I’m not sure if its all the squawking, or the Olympics, but something has me thinking about languages. No, I don’t speak any other than Baby and English, and even those I struggle with.
What I like best about foreign languages are the sayings and expressions unique to each language. No matter how wise and profound they may be in the mother tongue, when translated to English, they will always sound ridiculous and wildly entertaining. It really is a pity I don’t speak any other languages. If I did, I would translate English expressions into fancypants foreign languages and laugh my little head off at how crazy they sound.
I’ve already blogged about the Russian Au Pair’s “I feel there is a furnace in my brain,” one of my personal favorites that I use in conversation all the time, and that’s not all I’ve got! Jungledad and I heard a great one a few months back, watching a documentary about China. The documentary centered around the local election in a small town somewhere in China. It was all very illuminating, and entertaining, and corrupt. Anyway, at one point a high ranking official was being interviewed about some big scandal we couldn’t quite follow, and he summed it up with a Chinese saying, “a dead pig doesn’t fear boiling water.” He said it in a really serious voice. We had no idea what he was on about but still found it hilarious and have adopted it into our vernacular. If anyone knows what it actually means, do tell!
Jungledad found another delightful saying while speaking to a Chilean engineer. JD was trying to explain the expression “a watched pot never boils” to the engineer (I assume it was relevant to whatever they were working on) and asked if there was an equivalent expression in Spanish. The guy thought for a very long time, then said, “eyes on Sharkey.” He explained that Sharkey was a dodgy British Captain who used to sneak into harbor and plunder whenever he could. People were always scanning to horizon to watch out for him, hence the saying. Of course, this has little or nothing in common with “a watched pot never boils,” which only serves to prove my assertion that our sayings don’t translate either.
I used to know a Portuguese expression too. A guy I worked with at a pub in London taught it to me, and though I’m fuzzy on the details I seem to remember the gist, which was that it was okay for him to sleep with people he considered ugly. The saying itself had something to do with cats moving in the dark. Actually, most of his expressions were dirty. I remember him telling me that one of his favorite candies in Portugal was known as “vaginas” in Portuguese slang. I think the shape had something to do with it, but he had several other dirty reasons for the name, not suitable for a family blog.
Ah, the fun one can have with translation. If any of you clever, multilingual people have more for me to add to my growing collection, please share.
