Swedish idioms
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When talking with my international colleagues, I realise that we use a lot of idioms in Swedish that simply have no obvious english equivalent. I've started using them anyway, directly translated, just to troll them. I figured I might as well post them here too, for your amusement and betterment. I'll put them in context for you.
Calm down, there's no cow on the ice!
Is that all you've got? That's not much to hang in the christmas tree!
I've been looking for my phone everywhere. I think someone must have put rhubarbs on it.
We know what to do now. Everything is clear as sausage-brine.
I tried talking to him, but only got weird answers back. It was all "Hello, axhandle".
I wish he would stop posting, but, you know, evil gunpowder is difficult to get rid of.
What he did was bad, but to put onions on the salmon he just had to go and tell her about it too.
We're going out for dinner tonight, and as cream on the mashed potatoes we're also going to the cinema.
This one is more local to southwest of Sweden:
Drag your ass in the carpet! Now you're just trolling.
... I'll add more as I think of them.
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We know what to do now. Everything is clear as sausage-brine.
Clear as mud? I'm pretty sure I heard that as and English idiom. Or am I just translating from
Croatianmoon language?
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I'm pretty sure I heard that as and English idiom.
Clear as mud, and the opposite, clear as crystal are both English idioms. Certainly in the UK.
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I figured most of them out, I think.
But some I have never heard.
Calm down, there's no cow on the ice!
put onions on the salmon
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> Calm down, there's no cow on the ice!
Nothing to worry about.
> put onions on the salmon
Make something even worse than it already is.
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Ah, ok, I misinterpreted what sausage-brine is without actually looking it up.
Consequently, TIL
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http://www.scandikitchen.co.uk/great-scandinavian-idioms/
I'm bookmarking this! Plenty of great ones there that I had forgotten about.
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You forgot" I had a cock in my throat this morning".
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It puts the onions on the salmon or else it gets the hose again.
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Ò_o
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Jeg er kold i røven – I’m cold in the ass (Danish)
Meaning: I don’t care
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" I had a cock in my throat this morning".
What you do in your private time is none of our business...
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It means of course that you got flu and a soar throat.
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" I had a cock in my throat this morning".
@jukk said:It means of course that you got flu and a soar throat.
Of course.
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Nothing to worry about.
Make something even worse than it already is.
Hmm ok, but I never heard anyone say.
ingen ko på isen
lägga lök på laxenwhich is how I mentally tried translating them. And why would salmon be a bad thing... tasty fish it is.
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I've successfully used "behind the float" at times.
Edit: I need to try to use "caught with the beard in the mailbox" at some point.
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And why would salmon be a bad thing... tasty fish it is.
Haven't you heard what they do do fish? Surströmming.
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Haven't you heard what they do do fish? Surströmming.
You assume that I am not culturally close enough that it is a plague that crosses my plate at times too.
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Why so pessimistic? Let's not paint the devil on the wall.
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Can we paint a cow on ice with salmon, onions and sausage-brine?
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@PJH said:
Haven't you heard what they do do fish? Surströmming.
You assume that I am not culturally close enough that it is a plague that crosses my plate at times too.
One of my former roomies in a students' dormitory had this idea that a traditional African dish consisting mainly of fermented
cow dungvegetables would be a great success when prepared in out shared kitchen several times in a row.He then promptly accused me of racism when I told him in no uncertain terms that I found this not-so-appetizing.
Seriously, I opened the door to the kitchen, stepped inside and promptly felt like someone had landed a sucker punch into my stomach. If I hadn't had an empty stomach I would've thrown up.
To make things worse, my room was situated right next to the kitchen. Some of the people there really were thick as bricks. I mean, 4am is the ideal time to wash your dishes.
I also once nearly called the police because I was almost certain there was a murder going on above me - the way those guys were screaming. Turned out that their favourite soccer team had just landed a goal.
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traditional African dish consisting mainly of fermented vegetables
Sure it wasn't durian?
The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as rotten onions, turpentine, and raw sewage.
Edit: Ah - no - that's Asian, not African.
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Don't remember anymore.
What I sometimes wonder: How exactly was stuff like Hakarl discovered? I mean, someone has to have been very desperate to actually eat that stuff...
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I can kind of figure out what these mean, but I feel like most of them would have interesting explanations. E.g. "cow on the ice"... cow hooves would be horrible on ice, so I imagine it's likely to fall and probably break a leg. Although, I have to wonder if it means an icy pond, in which case there might also be a chance of it breaking through the ice and drowning or freezing to death.
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My grandma used to say "zesrała się bida i płacze". Literal meaning is "the poorness has shit its pants and cries". To this day, I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.
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Don't remember anymore.
What I sometimes wonder: How exactly was stuff like Hakarl discovered? I mean, someone has to have been very desperate to actually eat that stuff...
Well, sometimes you have to buy the pig in the sack.
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Precisely, which neans that unless there's a cow on the ice, you can calm down.
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Well, sometimes you have to buy the pig in the sack.
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My grandma used to say "zesrała się bida i płacze". Literal meaning is "the poorness has shit its pants and cries". To this day, I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.
Did she direct it to you a lot when you were a kid? It might have not been an idiom for all you remember...
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My grandma used to say "zesrała się bida i płacze". Literal meaning is "the poorness has shit its pants and cries". To this day, I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.
Are you Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle? Because that sounds an awful lot like something his grandmother would say.
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Let's start on a new ball, said the crone and shat in the sink.
What he said in that other thread lies on his plate when assessing his current actions.
He eloped with a furry. Such things happen when the latch isn't on.
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Make something even worse than it already is.
It's funny how in Polish we have a few exactly the same idioms that mean something completely different.
Dra dit pepperen gror – Go where the pepper grows (Swedish)
Meaning: Go to hell.
Polish: to run where the pepper grows.
Meaning: to run away to a far-away placeDet ligger en hund begraven här” – there is a dog buried here (Swedish)
Polish meaning: herein lies the problem.Meaning: there’s something fishy going on.
We also have the great: to show sb where crayfish passes winter (meaning: to own an).
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pig in the sack
Buying something that turns out to be not what you wanted to buy?
If so, it's "cat in the bag" here.
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If so, it's "cat in the bag" here.
"Cat in the bag" means buying something without being sure that it's really worth it here.
Funny how this stuff varies.
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That's a decent enough approximation I guess. It's almost never used after the fact, it's mostly "be careful not to buy a cat in the bag". So it's similar meaning overall I guess, just expressed a bit differently.
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Spot on! Or actually, @kt_ ' s definition is more precise.
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I've written the code now. Would you mind throwing a goat's eye at it before I commit it?
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the pig in the sack.
That one turns up in English as "a pig in a poke". Which appears to make very little sense until you realize that "poke" is an archaic word meaning bag or sack, derived from the same root as "pocket" and "pouch".
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Now you have shit in the blue cupboard
I love that. It's such a perfect little thumbnail sketch of a whole culture.
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This looks a bit dodgy. I suspect owls in the bog.
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He bassooned out the news for everyone to hear.
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There's no way out of this. We will have to bite into the sour apple.
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He bassooned out the news for everyone to hear.
It would be 'trumpeted' here. I like bassooned much better though.
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Don't pull everyone over the same comb.
I got pulled by the nose by the scammer.
His new car was one straw sharper than the old one.