"Winning the lottery" in many languages (Philological Room) Language Learning Forum

"Winning the lottery" in many languages
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11 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

Envinyatar
Diglot
Senior Member
Guatemala
Joined 5536 days ago
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Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: Modern Hebrew

Message 9 of 11

23 December 2009 at 1:42am | IP Logged

Ponape wrote:

Every December 22nd there is an important Christmas lottery draw in Spain, which is very popular here. That made me think about how different languages express the concept of "winning the lottery", including English. For example, in Spanish we say "le ha tocado la lotería", literally "the lottery touched him", i.e. "he's won the lottery" and "el Gordo ha tocado en Madrid" ("the Fat one has touched in Madrid"), meaning that the biggest prize tickets have been sold in Madrid. How do different languages express the same idea?
By the way, I wasn't lucky this year either...

Here we would say "se sacó la lotería", literally "he/she took off himself/herself the lottery" (or something like that). Biggest prize here is also known as "el gordo" but this fat man doesn't touch people here, we instead beat him up! We would say "le pegó al gordo" when someone wins the big prize.
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Captain Haddock
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
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Joined 6768 days ago
2282 posts - 2814 votes

Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek

Message 10 of 11

23 December 2009 at 4:38am | IP Logged

Japanese uses the verb ataru, which means, among many other things, to touch or strike. The same verb is
used for, say, hitting a target.
宝くじに当たる

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administrator
Hexaglot
Forum Admin
Switzerland
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3094 posts - 2987 votes

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Speaks: French*, English^C2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian
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Message 11 of 11

23 December 2009 at 10:02am | IP Logged

A very good topic! I must moved it to the Philological Room.
In French we say il a tiré le gros lot (he drew the big prize).

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