There is a Spanish proverb, “A buen entendedor, pocas palabras bastan” meaning “To the wise, even a few words are enough”. In the colloquial form of any language, these few words, which refer to proverbs, idioms and aphorisms, make complete sense to the wise, or the native speakers of a language. Thanks to their common socio-cultural heritage, they can decode their implicit message. However, these same words can leave novice language learners “scratching their heads” since they are not conversant with their underlying meaning. In order to be confident and “as cool as a cucumber” when they speak the target language, students need to be able to understand and use these precious pearls. That way, expressing their ideas in an efficient and creative manner becomes “a piece of cake”.
Idioms, for example, help us express the same idea in a more efficient and creative way. In the above paragraph itself, we see the use of so many popular English idioms which help us make the conversation less monotonous. Several similar idioms exist in all languages the world over. Apart from summing up a situation succinctly, they also help us improve our language proficiency.
Since we are already in the monsoon season, let’s explore an interesting idiom used to describe heavy rainfall. As most of us know, English uses “it’s raining cats and dogs” to describe heavy rainfall. Ever wondered how do the speakers of other languages express the same thought?
In Spanish, for example, they may say it´s raining like out of pitchers (está lloviendo a cántaros) it´s raining seas (está lloviendo a mares), it´s raining pikes (está lloviendo a cubos) or an especially hilarious one, it´s even raining husbands (está lloviendo hasta maridos). The origin of the last one is unknown but goes to show the variety of ways in which the same idea can be expressed in different languages. The idea of abundant rain is very clearly expressed in terms of pitchers, pikes and seas.
A range of colourful expressions can be found in French as well where it rains frogs (Il pleut des grenouilles), ropes (Il pleut des cordes), nails (Il pleut des clous), buckets (Il pleut à seaux), or finally it rains like a pissing cow (Il pleut comme vache qui pisse). One has to hand it to the French for having a myriad of vivid metaphors to describe what is basically just a weather phenomenon!
German expressions have their own flavour where it rains shoemakers (Es regnet Schusterjungs), puppies (junge Hund), twine (Bindfäden), in streams (in Strömen) or like out of buckets ( Wie aus Eimern).
These are just a few examples of how interesting the idioms in various languages can be. Their knowledge can help a language learner to truly learn how to communicate like a native speaker. Moreover, they are used frequently in daily conversation and on TV, radio, social media and in newspapers. Even though their meanings can be unpredictable at times, when one learns them in context and understands their true meaning, it adds colour to one’s repertoire. The clever and creative ones tend to be memorable and what’s memorable tends to get repeated in a meme-like fashion. So which are some of your favourite idioms in English or in your mother tongue? Do you know of any interesting ones in a foreign language? Write them below in the comments section. Until next time or hasta la vista!
-Sarika Salvi
Section head and faculty, Spanish