I know some of you hate the Twitter with a hot tweety passion, but I wanted to let you know that I’m giving away digital copies of Lessons in French today, courtesy of Sourcebooks Casablanca. So if you’re online, watch for hastag #lif and see what crazy trivia I come up with today.
This week we’ve done French idioms (Faire une carte de France? I better see that in a romance novel REAL soon), animal husbandry, bulls in fiction, and Regency insults and trivia. Oh, and Great Moments in Women’s History, with your host, Napoleon Bonaparte.
But suppose you want a digital copy, and don’t have the Twitter? Can’t use it at work? Aren’t interested? How about we give away a digital copy here? Sure, why not! Leave a comment with your favorite foreign language phrase, and it can be French or any other language, and the translation, and I’ll pick one winner at random to receive a digital copy of Lessons in French. Comments close in 24 hours. Bring on the funky foreign phrases!
Sorry, I meant to say that “fuori di testa” means “OUT of their head/mind”. Dang.
Oo menya sebota bez nosa (I have a dog with no nose)
Kakom on khuzheet? (how does he smell?)
Plokho (terrible)
Russian, sort of.
And in French, une grande horizontale (a great courtesan).
(I have the book already, thanks, but apparently do have time on my hands.)
I like the simple ones the best..
“Oye, Mami! Yo quiero..”
Do you mean on the monorail? “Por favor, mantenganse alejado de las puertas!” or “Please stand clear of the doors”
On the parking tram, it’s “Bienvenidos abordo. Por favor, permanesca sentado, y sienta los ninos en la parte central de la sienta.” – “Welcome aboard. Please remain seated, and seat children toward the center of the row.” I worked a summer in the parking lot at the Magic Kingdom, and will likely never forget this phrase, even though I speak no other Spanish! (Hopefully, Spanish speakers will forgive my attempt to spell it phonetically…)
My German favourite: danke für die Fahrt (thank you for the ride). Because, clearly I am as mature as a 6 year old!
My favorite Spanish word is “mascota,” which means “pet” AND “mascot.” So my dog is officially my mascot. I can’t get enough of this.
I also like “Me suena a chino,” which is their version of “It’s all Greek to me!”
Póg mo thóin! Means “Kiss my Ass!” in Irish… and don’t let anyone in Ireland try to convince you that it means “Hey good looking!” or anything similar. Makes for an awkward situation.
Sturm und Drang
literally, storm and stress but meant to convey longing and great emotion – appropriate for romance no?
and at the other end of the spectrum
Quelle Fantastique!
which my husband uses far too often when he “likes” something on Facebook. No he’s not french, he just loves the phrase.
I’ve never commented before, but I’ve been lurking here for awhile and I have to tell you how much I love this site and how it’s really taken over my reading selection.
Nostalgie de la boue which means “yearning for the mud.” A slangy term in French that not only means an attraction to what is unworthy, crude, or degrading, but also implies that one thinks that the yearner should be above such things.
“Futue te” is Latin for the classic anatomically impossible suggestion.
My favorite, from my american flatmate:
What she said: “Tengo una polla en el pie”
What she meant: “I have a blister on my foot”
What she should have said: “Tengo una ampolla en el pie”
What she ACTUALLY said: “I have a d¡ck in my foot”
Ah, the joys of learning other languages…
Ich habe nur Deutsch. Aber ich wuensche Franzoesisch zu sprechen und singen.
MY FAVORITE: Qui ecoutez la fromage? French for: Who cut the cheese?
Can’t say I’ve ever used the preceding in a tome, but I have used au contraire, de rigeur, and magnifique. Those three years of high school and one year of college French also served me well in Paris. (Deux billets pour Versailles, s’il vous plait.) Never mind that I got on the wrong train.
My absolute favorite is Turkish:
damlaya damlaya burs olur – drop by drop comes a waterfall
It’s used to mean that even one person can be the beginning of something big and important. Awwww. 🙂
I also did Latin at uni for a little while, and loved quite a few things, but Catullus 27, his ode to getting really drunk, was one of my favorites:
minister vetuli puer Falerni
inger mi calices amariores,
ut lex Postumiae iubet magistrae
ebriosa acina ebriosioris.
at vos quo lubet hinc abite, lymphae
vini pernicies, et ad severos
migrate. hic merus est Thyonianus.
My colloquial translation is as follows:
Hey, kid! You with the bottle of the good stuff!
Give me a stronger cup this time,
as ordered in the drinking rules laid down by Postumia, the party goddess,
drunker than the drunkest grape.
Do we serve water in this bar? HELL NO H20.
It ruins good wine, so leave it outside
for all the party-poopers. Seriously, give me the good stuff.
Catullus is likely rolling in his grave, and my ~liberties~ with translations are part of why I didn’t major in Latin, but. I love that poem.
English is a foreign language to me too, but my favourite foreign phrase doesn’t really mean anything, so maybe it’ll qualify?
Yes Box Holiday
It’s somenthing we picked up when I was a kid. It could be from an English lesson, from a childrens’ book, or maybe from some comedy show, I really don’t know. It’s become sort of a family thing to use in any given situation where depending on your tone of voice you can pretty much make it mean anything. lol
Other favorites (a bit lame compared to eels in hovercrafts, I know, but that’s me):
MÅ IKKE TILDEKKES – Do not cover (in Norwegian)
FÅR EJ ÖVERTÄCKAS – Swedish-Danish?
NO CUBRIR – Spanish
NE PAS RECOUVRIR – French
MÁ EKKI HYLLJA – Islandish?
NIET BEDEKKEN – Dutch
– From an electric radiator – usually situated near the toilet. 😉
But I’ll vote for the Hovercraft filled with eels. In Finnish that would be:
Pintaliitäjäni on täynnä ankeriaita.
(Incidentally, pintaliitäjä also means a swinger or a very superficial socialite in Finnish) 😆
(written phonetically, because my German language skills are non-existent) Volen zee ein schlagen haben?
Which means “Would you like me to smack you?” It’s what my dad’s beloved grandmother used to say to when he was little. No kidding.
Dang, ETA: pintaliitäjä being the hovercraft – not the eels – in Finnish.
moral97 -Yes, I guess there’s a moral to the story. 97 eels?
My favorite French is the phrase “esprit de l’escalier”. It translates to “spirit of the stairs,” but really means “that wonderful, pithy comeback you think of as you are walking away from the argument.” It sounds so much better in French.
I like,“On ne nait pas femme, on le devient”. It’s a quote from Simone de Beauvoir. It means, “You’re not born a woman, you become one.”
It’s also very subversive because she used the masculine pronoun “le” for what translates as “one” in English. Normally, it would be correct to use “la”, the feminine form.
My other favorite is from Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. It’s a bastardized latin quote: Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
My favorite slang phrase in chinese is ??? (fei ji chang) which means airport. But in slang it means a flat chest. Like a runway. It just makes me laugh every time I read it!
They also call a woman who sleeps around ???? (gong gong qi che) or public bus because everyone has had a ride.
Of course this is according to wikipedia. Not that any respectable Chinese woman would have told me any of these fun ones. But I did learn that i the specific province I lived in, it’s a big insult to call someone a hammer because you are effectively calling them a dick.
El baño es en fuego – the bathroom is on fire
I live for the day I can use it in conversation.
Oh, my favorite in latin actually comes from a romance book (don’t remember which one though) The hero’s family motto was: Ad astra per aspera
(To the stars, the hard way)
“Mach es dir selber Schweinhund.”
“Go fuck yourself, pigdog.”
My fav in French
“les carottes sont cuites!”
literally means “the carrots are cooked!”
but equates to “that’s it/I’ve had it!”
it’s simple, but I love that “Konnichiwa,” Japanese for hello, actually means “In reference to today”. So that’s my favorite.
“Ichigo ichie”, a japanese saying that literally says “One time, one meeting” which means “a once-in-a-lifetime chance”. Quite appropriate to romance, I think!
And I wanted to precise that the french endearment “mon petit chou” doesn’t refers to the term cabbage(though it’s a synonym in french) but to the delicious pastry (maybe you would call it a choux bun, but I’m not sure about the translation), which makes much more sense when you think about it.
Anyway, great topic!
I’ve always rather liked:
Me transmitte sursum, Caledoni!
or
Beam me up, Scotty
So in Russian class we had to memorize dialogues to learn declensions, and the best one involved people discussing a suitcase. The first one says, “Oh, is that your suitcase?” “Yes, that IS my suitcase.” ….wait for it….
?? ????? ??????? ! (Oh, it’s so big!)
Tragically, it was not followed by, “That’s what she said!”
Heh. My mother speaks Italian, but I don’t. Over the years, she’s taught me bits and phrases, some of which come out of me at the oddest times, like the following one (and any Italian speakers out there, please forgive my spelling, which is probably incorrect):
“Vieni con me, marinaio?”
This, of course, loosely translates to “going my way, sailor?” which is what came vomiting out of my mouth about twenty years ago when I had the opportunity to meet Fabio in person. He found execrable accent, and my immediate beet red face, quite amusing.
myself52 – as in, I should be ashamed of, at least until the age of. 🙂
I’m sure someone’s already said this, but: Voulez-vous couchez avec moi c’est soir? Very apt for a romance novel! And handy in real life too. 😉
There are some great Italian ones. “In bocca al lupo” means, essentially, “break a leg,” but it translates literally to “in the mouth of the wolf.” In response you say, “Crepi il lupo!” which means you want that wolf dead.
But, then again, my Italian family also tells me that when a pigeon poops on you it’s good luck.
HA, HA, I remember when Lady Marmalade came out and I was singing Voulez-vous couchez avec moi c’est soir? out loud and in public, before I realized what it meant :emb:
My fave French phrase is Dans tes bras c’est mon destin which means My destiny is in your arms. I think Gambit said it to Rogue once and it stuck with me ever since!
I would love a digital copy of Lessons in French 🙂 Thanks!!
I like “esprit d’escalier” (which I am certain I have just misspelled as I don’t speak or read French). It means “the spirit of the staircase” and it’s the feeling you have when you walk away from an argument and then think of the perfect retort.
Looking up the thread, I see someone else already said that. So I’ll add the only other French phrase I know,
“Il y a un dragon dan mo lit. Je veux un moustiquere.” (There is a dragon in my bed. I want a mosquito net.)
I like ya ne znayu, Russian for I don’t know, and ya ne ponimayu, which is I don’t understand. I figured it can’t hurt to learn those two expressions!
From my traumatic childhood:
Ich glaube ich kann mit meinem kurzen krummen Beinen schneller laufen als Sie.
I think I can with my short crooked legs run faster than you.
Ah, my heart goes pitter-pat at all of this awesome language goodness. (I’m a language geek so all anyone has to do to turn me on is whisper phoneme. )
Turks are very romantic people and have lots of beautiful phrases for romance, love etc etc. I won’t be sharing those. 😉 One of my favorite Turkish phrases is
Can?m s?k?ld? = My soul grew tired or I’m bored. I love that the boredom gets passed off on the soul
Italian, how I adore this language, and it too has many lovely romantic phrases.
I’m pretty fond of
Ti voglio bene = I wish you well but really means I love you in earnest. It’s the kind of phrase you use with someone you mean to spend your life with or someone really important to you rather than with that boyfriend you adore in your early 20s or that lover that you’ll never forget but wouldn’t marry.
I’m also fond of
vaffanculo = which means basically go fuck yourself in the ass
I find it a great phrase for those times when I’m really angry.
Also good is
Non me ne frega = I don’t give a fuck about it
I had a friend in Italian class who was really good at the language and had a great sense of humor. We’d have lunch and make up crazy phrases for the things around us. Our long standing favorites were
I bastardi piccioni = bastard pigeons
Putana Vaca = whore cows
We were in our early 20s and this provided hours of entertainment.
My Turkish teachers won’t teach me anything really vulgar but my Italian host parents had no problem doing so. All and all, though, I must admit that both cultures and language are absolutely beautiful, filled with wonderful expressions and interesting history. I have never had anything but a good experience with native speakers who are always patient, kind and excited that anyway has dedicated multiple years to studying their languages. Plus the food is great both places.
“Fais-tu le pompier” : To put it politely, an invitation to self-gratification. (Learned it high school french class)
Sin Verguenza!
(Espanol) Without shame. Though I’ve always had the notion this was a less-than-polite way of saying this….!
I’m printing out this comment thread for research purposes.
Ne petez pas plus haut que votre tete.
Literally, “Don’t fart higher than your head.” Means “Don’t get too big for your britches.”
In my book, any idiom with “fart” in it is a winner.