From the droll bluntness of the Finns to the venereal vision of the French, this list reflects some diverse and delightful ways of seeing and speaking about the world. Hopefully it will also induce a few smiles, because not everything is always lost in translation.
Beginning with the Brits, who excuse their swearwords with the phrase “pardon my French,” a sly indictment of their rivals across the channel. This is perhaps because the French have an enviable flair for profanities and the sordid…
A Frenchman scorns the saying “I can do this with next to no equipment”, instead favouring: “I can do it with my dick and my knife” (avec ma bite et mon couteau).
He will not refer to a woman as “busty,” but rather assert: “there’s a crowd on the balcony” (il y a du monde au balcon).
In France, you’re not “nit-picking,” you’re “a fly sodomizer” (enculeur de mouche).
In Spain, you might “give someone a pumpkin” (dar calabazas a alguien), or stand them up.
This could be because you’re just too busy, or in Australia, “flat out like a lizard drinking.”
It’s that or maybe you’d “been shagged by a hare” (deur den oaze gepoept), a Flemish saying for someone in a real hurry.
On the animal theme, the Swedes and the Dutch favour our bovine friends…
In Sweden, calling for calm is reasoned with: “there’s no cow on the ice” (det är ingen ko på isen) – clearly a panic-inducing situation.
And in Holland, “to pull old cows out of the ditch” (oude koeien uit de sloot halen) means to bring up old stories and arguments that are best left forgotten.
For the Finns, there are bigger things to worry about than cattle milling around frozen ponds: in Finland, someone who is in a very bad mood can be likened to “a bear shot in the ass” (kuin perseeseen ammuttu karhu).
Conversely, in the southern states of America, someone is a very good mood would be “grinnin’ like a possum eatin’ a sweet tater” (potato).
While it might not sound it, in Norway finding “a raisin in the sausage” (en rosin i polsen) is to get a pleasant surprise in something already good.
For Italians, you can have your cake and eat it too, except that wine trumps cake: you “have the wine cask full and the wife drunk” (avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca).
And in Mongolia, good facial hair trumps a drunk wife: one responds to a sneeze with “God bless you and may your moustache grow like brushwood” (burkhan orshoo butin chinee sakhal urga).
There’s also a colourful array of sayings surrounding bodily functions…
In Finland, something doesn’t “vanish into thin air,” it “disappears like a fart in the Sahara” (kadota kuin pieru Saharaan).
And if someone in a rush does a bad job, the Finns will say he “pissed while running” (Juosten kustu).
Then we have the Russians, who cite their imperial heritage when referring to the toilet: “I’m going where the Czar goes on foot” (because the Czar goes everywhere else in a carriage).
And back in France, one simply says “there’s a rush at the small gate” (ça se bouscule au portillon).
Finally, my personal favourite and one I hope to employ in the future. In Sweden to do the impossible is to “make magic with your knees” (Trolla med knäna).
