[Multilingual Monday] Never ever

[aadroma]

I was asked about a Hebrew variant to "when pigs fly" recently, and I thought: what a great idea for an article! I could gather various language versions of this phrase!

Of course, Wikipedia beat me to it. Damn it.

But their foreign list is still fairly sparse. For example, Amharic has የህልም እንጀራ, yähləm ənjära, "injera in a dream". Japanese seems

Comments

[muckefuck]

"if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bus."

Sounds like a euphemised version of the Yiddish classic "If my grandma had balls, she'd be my grandpa". (Az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde.)

[aadroma]

ROFL. I love the fact that the Hebrew word for eggs (and balls!), beytzim, is one of the only Hebrew words in this sentence.

I'd love to see what you can come up with for this. Finding these turns of phrase can be rather difficult!

[muckefuck]

For German, there's also "bis du schwarz bist" ("until you're black"). It most frequently occurs with warten "wait" but other verbs can substitute, e.g. Da kannst Du aber suchen bis Du schwarz bist, weil es da KEINE EINZIGE Ausnahme gibt. "You can keep looking until you're blue in the face, because there's not ONE SINGLE exception." For obvious reasons, it's not as common in speech as it once was.

The Germans also have an equivalent to "Saint Glinglin", namely "Sankt Nimmerlein" ("Saint Nevers"). More obscure variations are am Fest der Beschneidung Mariä ("on the Feast of the Circumcision of Mary") and am Teufels Himmelsfahrtag "on the day of the Devil's Ascension".

[progbear]

I’m reminded of the Wayne’s World classic, “Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt!”

[gorkabear]

There is a variant for Spanish: Instead of the "cuando las ranas críen pelo" we used to say "cuando las ranas tengan bigote" :)

[muckefuck]

And for Catalan? The Diccionari de sinònims de frases fetes gives an equivalent of the French "when the hens have teeth" (quan les gallines trauran dents) alongside the quizzical quan pixin les gallines "when the hens piss". Also l'any d'En Quirze ("the year of Quiricus"--whoever he is), l'any xeix ("the year x"), and the very down home pel segar del mes de maig ("at the reaping in the month of may").

Oh, and another expression with a French parallel is la setmana dels tres dijous ("the week of three Thursdays"). Except the Cajuns and Canadians go one better and say la semaine des quatre jeudis.

[gorkabear]

That must be one of the typical phrases we have lost in Catalan, as many others because I hadn't heard any of those but you know how bastardized is the Catalan spoken around me.

There is a sociological thing going in the big city: all the phrases that refer to the agricultural life aren't relevant anymore and people just translate the Castillian ones (quan les granotes tinguin pèl, which I knew it was not Catalan)

[muckefuck]

I really think you should start saying "quan pixin les gallines". You could single-handedly make it catch on!

Welsh

[muckefuck]

pan ddaw 'Dolig yn yr haf "when Christmas comes in summer"
(pan mai) aderyn bach del ydi'r gath "(when) the cat is a pretty little bird" (NW Wales)

And if you're feeling poetic: Pan ddaw’r môr dros Gader Idris "When the sea comes to Cadair Idris"

[strongaxe]

Might "baavir gamal poreach" be better rendered as "a camel flourishes in air"?