Yasha, who grew up speaking Russian, recalls phrase used to comfort a child after a small mishap like a skinned knee. The phrase translates as “It will heal in time for the wedding,” and Yasha had assumed it was solely Slavic. So he was surprised to hear a South Carolinian use the English expression It’ll heal in time for the wedding in similar circumstances. In fact, versions of this reassuring phrase appear across Europe in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Czech, French, Spanish, Polish, Greek, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Portuguese. A Hungarian version translates as “By the time you become a soldier, it will be gone.” In Turkey, a child’s boo-boo is soothed with the equivalent of “You’ll forget about it by the time you grow up.” This is part of a complete episode.
In English, you can express skepticism with the classic saying when pigs fly. In Tagalog, a similar sentiment is expressed with a phrase that translates “when the crow turns white, when the heron turns black,” and there’s a Hungarian phrase that...
Dax in Santa Cruz, California, wonders: Now that we’re into the 21st century, when will people stop saying that initial 20 when referring to a year such as 2028 the way we dropped the 19 in the term 1980s and just started referring to the ’80s? This...
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