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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5101 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes  Speaks: German*, English | Message 9 of 31 03 May 2014 at 10:38am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It's "du bist ins Fettnäpfchen getreten"
This expression is nowadays pretty much only used in literary German. You're more likely to hear something like "Hab Dich nicht so!" or "Stell Dich nicht so an!" BTW, many, many years ago expressions such as "Warmduscher," "Weichei" etc. were popular. There are whole websites dedicated to these kinds of nonsense expressions, many of which are a bit off-color. However, you might enjoy them, if you're into puzzles and decoding German compound nouns. :-) For example: Foto-von-der-Freundin-im-Geldbeutel-Träger = one who carries a picture of his girlfriend in his wallet. Edited by Doitsujin on 03 May 2014 at 12:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4625 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 10 of 31 03 May 2014 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
No, it's "du bist ins Fettnäpfchen getreten"! :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5101 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 11 of 31 03 May 2014 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I didn't expect two mistakes in one sentence. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6217 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 31 03 May 2014 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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At the moment I'm learning dozens of German idioms by actually sketching out the literal
meanings. So for "Ich muss die Gürtel enger schnallen" I would sketch a figure tightening up his belt. Jacke wie Hose, das ist mir Wurst, nicht alle Tassen im Schrank haben, Schmiere stehen usw.. Und endlich, ich werde nur für mich die Hand ins Feuer legen (wirklich?) :P Edited by Jiwon on 03 May 2014 at 2:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4583 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 13 of 31 03 May 2014 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thanks everyone for setting me right. I'll look into these and start trying with some
easy ones that complement my rather low vocab level right now. Thanks too for giving me a better picture of what an idiom actually is. Expanding upon that, has anyone come across any extremely literal languages? Not necessarily creatively lacking, but saying exactly what it means? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5101 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 14 of 31 03 May 2014 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Since most people only wear one belt, you'd usually use "Ich muss den Gürtel enger schnallen"
That idiom, too, is mostly found in books and movies.
At least in English, you can offer to literally put your hand in the fire for a friend, because the OED has given in and added figuratively as one of the meanings of literally.
No, but there's an old TNG episode, Darmok, in which the main protagonist faces the opposite problem--an alien culture that only uses idioms. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 15 of 31 03 May 2014 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The issue here is that being literal/idiomatic isn't objective. It depends on what you're used to. For example it's often said that we Russians are very direct, and I certainly find it hard to match the expected level of subtlety, but anyone from Western Europe learning Russian will also tell you that we say things in completely different ways from what they're used to. They may even like it but it's still strange and unnatural at least at first.
Esperanto may be the closest to what you're looking for. Natural languages just don't work like that, and any counter-examples are at least somewhat artificial, like a standard literary language that attempts to make things logical and straightforward. Medieval Latin was also like that, and actually this also partially applies to "Globish" (global English as used by and between non-natives). It's a slightly dangerous topic tbh. I know you didn't mean it in a bad way, but that's not very far from discussing which language is objectively better/more rich/more sensible. Historically, languages like Latin, Greek, Sanskrit have been claimed to be that, but this was obviously just due to their cultural importance. Edited by Serpent on 03 May 2014 at 5:34pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4488 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 16 of 31 04 May 2014 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The putting your hand in the fire is from a
Roman tale. It's used more widely. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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