Baburra Posted October 15, 2014 Report Share Posted October 15, 2014 Are there any idiomatic expressions that are universally used by all or at least many countries?I'm inclined to think that almost all idiomatic expressions would only be unique to their individual cultures but I wonder if there were some that most countries would use in pure form but translated.For example, raining cats and dogs is unique to only English as far as I know, but maybe an idiom like 'sweating like a pig' would be more common and therefore used by other countries in their own language?That's just a rough example though and I don't expect it to be so, but I'd love to hear from locals of other countries if there are any idioms in your culture that translate exactly to some idioms used by English speakers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linguaholic Posted October 15, 2014 Report Share Posted October 15, 2014 Are there any idiomatic expressions that are universally used by all or at least many countries?There are definitely some idioms that are used in various languages/cultures. Moreover, I would claim that there are many "universal metaphors". I am not sure if you consider metaphors to be idioms, though. Metaphors of movement or more specifically metaphors with "up" (up is usually good) and "down" (is usually bad) are quiet common in many different languages. More specifically, you could say that things from above are considered to be good and things from "below" are considered to be bad. There are quite a lot of metaphors portraying this idea of good and bad by making use of this "up/down difference". I will come up with some nice examples eventually:=) In the meantime, if you are interested in these kind of things, you should have a look at the book "Metaphors we live by". You will find plenty of examples in there. This book is like the holy grail when it comes to "Metaphors". It was written be George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DancingLady Posted October 15, 2014 Report Share Posted October 15, 2014 I don't know of any off hand, but my teachers never taught us very many idiomatic expressions at all, which is quite unfortunate. I think there are some metaphors that are used through any languages, but I am not sure. Western cultures do share quite a bit though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosa Posted October 15, 2014 Report Share Posted October 15, 2014 This is something that I have always thought of too. I do believe that there are similar idiomatic expressions that are used by various language speakers. I think i've even heard them been used in foreign movies a few times too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacetimecontinuum Posted October 15, 2014 Report Share Posted October 15, 2014 Are there any idiomatic expressions that are universally used by all or at least many countries?I'm inclined to think that almost all idiomatic expressions would only be unique to their individual cultures but I wonder if there were some that most countries would use in pure form but translated.For example, raining cats and dogs is unique to only English as far as I know, but maybe an idiom like 'sweating like a pig' would be more common and therefore used by other countries in their own language?That's just a rough example though and I don't expect it to be so, but I'd love to hear from locals of other countries if there are any idioms in your culture that translate exactly to some idioms used by English speakers.This is a very interesting question, I'm sure there are lots of countries who have their equivalent of say: A Picture Paints a Thousand Words, or Action Speaks Louder Than Words, or Between A Rock and a Hard Place, or even Long in the Tooth. Certain countries may have verbatim translations of these idioms or a variation on them.After all, we're all human and we've all had experiences which would merit use of those expressions.Wouldn'tcha think?By the way, I consider myself a polyglot as a I read and write in about 6 different types of English. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
everybodyknows Posted November 5, 2014 Report Share Posted November 5, 2014 There is one that I can think of: "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" which is the equivalent of the spanish "Más vale pájaro en mano que ciento volando"in English literally means A bird in the hand is more valuable than 100 flying.Nu da vrabia din mână pe cioara de pe gard" in Romanian means: don't give away the bird in the hand for the crow on the fence."Beter één vogel in de hand dan tien in de lucht." in Dutch ”un tien vaut mieux que deux tu l'auras”.French-they kept the meaning but got rid of the birds and so on...There is this interesting book to read too that might satisfy your curiosityhttp://www.amazon.com/European-Proverbs-Languages-Equivalents-Sanskrit/dp/1875943447 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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