Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Equal Goes It Loose

I'm married to a German woman whose English is far better than mine, despite my having a home-field advantage and while I can make myself understood in her language I'm forced to conclude based on results of forty-five years of matrimony, I'm not carrying the day very often when I use it.

Anyway. My point, assuming you had wondered, is that while every language has words and or expressions that can trip up non-native speakers, English, possibly because we've borrowed so much of our language from everywhere, has a lot, if not the most.

In my wife's language, 'abwarten und tee trinken' (let's wait and have some tea) is equivalent to our 'wait and see'. My favorite kinda-sorta phrase is how we in English will say 'that's Greek to me' for something we don't fully grasp while Germans say 'es kommt mir sehr Spanisch vor' (it sounds very Spanish to me).

There are, of course, German turns of phrase, like the English translation I'm using as my title for today that we just don't get at all. But turnabout is fair play and here's a short list I found that probably helps serve as a discouragement to everyone everywhere who's thinking of learning English.  

Gleich geht es los, ehrlich.
-bill kenny


 

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