Coals to Newcastle in other languages

[gasterea]

Hi everybody, this is just for a bit of linguaphile fun. So, as wiki tells us (carrying) Coals to Newcastle is about

Comments

[xwingace]

Dutch: Water naar de zee dragen -- to carry water to the sea.

XWA

[gasterea]

Bedankt!

[dangerouss]

Czech: nosit dříví do lesa (bring wood to a forest)

[gasterea]

Děkuju.

[dangerouss]

Prosím. ;)

[renardine78]

French: porter de l'eau à la riviere - to carry water to the river.

German = Classical Greek: Eulen nach Athen tragen.

[gasterea]

Merci bien.

[muckefuck]

The closest match in Irish is probably ag breith liúdar go Toraigh "taking pollacks to Tory". (Bonus pun: another name for "pollack" in English is "coalfish".)

[gasterea]

Go raibh maith agat (how very appropriate - the only thing I remember from my crash course in Irish). I knew you would come up with smth really diverting :-)

I am still waiting for some non-European languages to show up though - I do hope they have this kind of idiom too.

[muckefuck]

For Persian, زيره به كرمان بردن zīrah bih Kirmān burdan "to take cumin to Kerman".

[gasterea]

Another lovely one, thanks!

[muckefuck]

What, you're not going to tell me ممنونم?

I was very charmed by this one, too. I've been looking for equivalents in Chinese or Korean but so far without success.

[gasterea]

Nope, that would be cheating. I don't know my way about Persian at all. Have you seen that in Finnish they use Sahara?! Amazing, isn't it?

BTW what about Catalan? No luck?