Comments on: Deciphering the Food Idioms of Foreign Languages

By: Robert Stephens

Robert Stephens — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:48:39 +0000

When the King and Queen visited my town in southern Thailand back in the ’60s during my Peace Corps days, the royals’ parade route was “spruced up” as we would say. Only those roads were repaved and the building fronts were painted, potted plants were placed all along the route. The Thais called it “sprinkling parsley over the top.” (Something like, “pock chee roy naa.”) The rest of the town was left untouched.

By: JV

JV — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:23:47 +0000

I lived with a couple from the Azores for a few years. They had many Portuguese idioms but my two favorites were “cabeca melancia” and “cabeca tomate” (melon head and tomato head–pardon my poor spelling). One was a worse insult than the other but despite the mild translation in English they were supposedly fairly rough insults back home…

By: MD

MD — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:16:39 +0000

@Inessita

I love hearing about the Danish expression you mentioned above. An old friend of mine would always say (with false oversolicitous sympathy) “Want a cupcake?” or “Need a cookie?” whenever listening to someone’s complaints.

By: M

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:48:33 +0000

When I was preparing for the DELF (a French language test), I had to study French idioms. The most intriguing one was only food-related in the English translation. Presumably a French person would have “other cats to whip” instead of “other fish to fry.” I spent three years in France without hearing the phrase, but I was always impressed by the image.

By: M

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:54:37 +0000

In Spain, the dish black beans and rice is called “moros y cristianos,” which means “Moors and Christians,” with the black beans representing the Moors and the rice representing the Christians. A bit racist but an interesting food idiom.

By: Giampaolo

Giampaolo — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:30:50 +0000

I can recall a few (Colombian) Spanish idioms.

When someone is “in their own sauce” (“en su salsa”), they are extremely content in their current environment. It’s like saying that someone is “happy as a pig in mud”.

When someone “sweetens your ear” (“endulzar el oído”), they are using excessive flattery to persuade you to do something.

Someone who is “fried” (“frito”) is plain out of luck or in a very bad situation.

By: Inessita

Inessita — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:49:33 +0000

“Tag en kiks!”

When somebody is complaing about silly things and feels extremely for themselves, a Dane might advise to “take a cookie”.

By: Sadia

Sadia — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:41:20 +0000

This isn’t quite an idiom, but in Bengali, a precocious child is referred to as “paka”, which means “ripe”. A better one is “to cover fish with spinach (or actually, the generic term for leafy greens)”, which means to attempt to quell a rumour.

By: Cristie

Cristie — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:04:11 +0000

What a wonderful post! My favorites are “Drown the mouse” and “Ripe mango”. I’ll try to throw those into the conversation next time I’m accomadating the sheep and the cabbage. THX

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