[Multilingual Monday] What suddenly
I love idiomatic expressions, even if they cause me to sometimes completely misinterpret a sentence in another language. They still provide some unique character to a language and expose a little bit of how the speakers of a language "think."
One idiom in Hebrew that succeeded in throwing me offguard was תה פתאום, ma pit'om, which literally means "what suddenly," used to refute and express surprise at something someone else has said, and its closest English equivalent would be, "Are you kidding??" See:
מה פיתום? אני לו אוהב אותו בכלל!
Are you serious? I don't like him at all!
Many languages have some phrase that acts in this manner -- Japanese, for example, has 冗談じゃない, joudan ja nai, or paradoxically "it isn't a joke". And this is where I open the floor -- I'm looking for something that would be used in this instance in any language -- yes, even Envlish, as I'm sure there are some doozies (one of my most frequently used in English is, "Are you on crack???" :: laugh ::).
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One idiom in Hebrew that succeeded in throwing me offguard was תה פתאום, ma pit'om, which literally means "what suddenly," used to refute and express surprise at something someone else has said, and its closest English equivalent would be, "Are you kidding??" See:
מה פיתום? אני לו אוהב אותו בכלל!
Are you serious? I don't like him at all!
Many languages have some phrase that acts in this manner -- Japanese, for example, has 冗談じゃない, joudan ja nai, or paradoxically "it isn't a joke". And this is where I open the floor -- I'm looking for something that would be used in this instance in any language -- yes, even Envlish, as I'm sure there are some doozies (one of my most frequently used in English is, "Are you on crack???" :: laugh ::).
Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com