We spoke on a recent show about the joking consolation parents offer to a crying child, “It’ll be better before you’re married.” A podcast listener in Siberia emailed to say that in Russian, a similar saying translates to, “It has enough time to heal before you’re married.” This also shows up in a translation of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Heal Before You’re Married”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Remember a couple of weeks ago when we had a call from Carol in Washington, D.C. who wanted to ask about the phrase, it’ll be better before you’re married?
Yes, this is something that your parents might say to you when you fall and hurt your knee, and it’s not really serious and they just think you’re making too much of it.
Exactly.
And I think she had some Irish heritage and it was kind of just chiding, you know, get a grip, basically.
Right.
We heard a lot of responses from people who have used that or a similar phrase, and I wanted to share a couple of them.
We heard from Katya, who lives in Yekaterinbork, Russia, and that’s right on the edge of Siberia there.
And she said that the way that she would translate the Russian version of that expression is it has enough time to heal before the wedding.
And she shared that with us, and sure enough, I Googled it, and I found the same kind of locution in a translation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.
It’ll heal before you’re married.
Oh, good.
Isn’t that cool?
I love that cross-cultural connection there.
Yes, indeed.
And then we heard from Karen Dilla in Vancouver, Canada, who said, I listened with great interest to the caller whose Irish dad told her, don’t worry, it’ll clear up before you’re married.
I was born in Northern Ireland, and my lovely dad always surveyed our skinned knees and twisted ankles and said cheerfully, don’t worry, it will turn into a pig’s foot in the morning.
I like that.
Foot always pronounced foot.
Foot.
She adds, as you may imagine, this was rather less comforting than we were hoping for.
I have no idea why he felt this might help, as I was always tortured with images of trotters emerging from various parts of my anatomy.
Well, we do that.
You do that with some kids.
Some kids can take the joke.
Right.
We do that with my son as well.
We just kind of make the situation sound worse.
You know, he’ll be moaning about falling down or something.
We’re like, oh, call the ambulance. Get the lawyers. We’re suing everybody.
My little babies.
And he’ll be like, Papa.
I’m like, well, it’s not that serious.
Right.
You deflect them, right?
I love that.
Yeah.
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