“If She Had Wheels, She’d Be a Vehicle” Means “You Can Wish All You Want For Things That Won’t Be Happening”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hi, my name is Katya Hilton and I’m calling from Jacksonville, Florida.

Welcome, Katya.

Hi, Katya.

So, yes, I’m calling because the other day you guys had people on that were talking about sayings from other countries and how they do or do not translate into English.

And it reminded me of a very funny saying in German that my brother and I don’t think is funny, but my parents think is hilarious.

And what it is is when my family, when you talk to them about if something were some way, like if I had this or if I had that, my mother always says, and the exact translation is, if grandma had wheels, she would be a bus.

And the first time we heard it, my brother and I were like, what? That doesn’t make any sense.

And my mother had to explain it to me.

And then I said, oh, I get it.

You mean like if I had ham, I’d make a ham and cheese sandwich if I had cheese.

And there’s a long silence and my mother’s like, what? Was?

And so the meaning is the same, but the literal translations just do not cross in German.

Wait, is your ham and cheese one a saying? Because I’ve never heard that and that is hilarious.

Oh, you haven’t heard that? See, I thought that I like that saying. I hear that a lot.

Oh, I love that one. Let’s hear that again.

Sure. Like, if I had ham, I’d make a ham and cheese sandwich if I had cheese.

That’s one that my husband said a lot. He says that a lot.

But all these are about wishing for things that aren’t happening and probably can’t happen.

All right.

So I’ve done some digging on this. Actually, we had somebody ask about this on Twitter in July.

And I have found it in Spanish as far as 1915, Dutch, 1932, Portuguese, 1936, Italian, and Yiddish.

And I bet it’s in other European languages. All versions of this.

The Spanish version I found in 1912. If my aunt, instead of skirts, had wheels, she wouldn’t be my aunt. She’d be a bicycle.

Wow.

But in English, there’s nothing like it. There’s no saying like that.

Well, English, believe it or not, has borrowed directly from the German. All of the earliest uses we know of in English were translated from German.

So they were like German books, many of them from the 1880s about Bismarck, translated directly from the German into English.

And so that’s how it entered English, was from the German.

The earliest one I found in German was from 1876. So it’s about the aunt rather than the grandmother.

And actually, the person who’s being talked about around the world and all these variations changes.

So it could be an aunt, a grandma, a mother-in-law. It’s almost always a woman.

And the vehicle changes, too. It’s a bus, a bicycle, a cart, an ox cart, a tea cart, a shopping cart, a trolley, a tram, a cable car, a motorcycle, a wagon, an automobile, or a carriage.

So there’s a lot of variations on this around the world over the last 100-plus years.

See, I had no idea this was even a thing anywhere else. I was even wondering if my family had made it up.

Oh, no. Oh, no. This is a long tradition.

You guys are firmly in a long tradition. You wear it proudly.

You should put this on shirts, and you’ll have many people recognize it.

I will have to tell my mom that we won’t think her saying is so stupid anymore.

No, yeah. It goes back to the 1870s, at least as early as the 1870s.

Wow. She’ll be thrilled to hear that.

But, Katya, thank you for sharing inside your family’s history and memories. We really appreciate it.

Well, thank you. This has been very, very interesting.

I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.

Our pleasure. Thanks for calling.

All right. Thank you so much.

All right. Bye-bye. Take care.

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