Japanese Idiom

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

A while back we asked you for idioms that you love in other languages.

We talked about a bunch of them on the show, Grant.

Remember like the one for you’re crazy in Spanish that translates as your bow tie is whistling.

Remember that one?

Just imagining it spinning.

Yeah, I love that one.

That inspired Zach Wagner to write in.

He lived in Israel for a while.

And there your bow tie doesn’t spin.

You have a cockroach in your head.

Bats in the belfry.

Yeah, a geranium in your cranium, right?

And Pete Lagos from here in San Diego wrote in and said that he was trying to learn Japanese a while back,

And he came across a phrase that means to take credit for someone’s hard work.

You know, somebody else does all the work and you try to get the credit.

I’m not going to tempt the Japanese, but it translates as doing sumo in someone else’s underwear.

I love that.

I love that.

You know, I mean, they deserve that.

If they’re going to try to take credit for what I did, they can wrestle in someone else’s underwear.

And then finally, Sister Martha Bourne wrote us.

She’s one of the Mary Knoll sisters in Ossining, New York.

And she wrote in with a favorite expression from the Cantonese-Chinese spoken in Hong Kong.

You use it when you meet somebody and they say, how are you?

The translation of it is, no holes, no worn places.

I love that, to mean that you’re okay.

You say, no holes, no worn places.

Very nice.

And Sister Martha Bourne says, I appreciate this response more with each birthday I celebrate.

I do, too.

Send us your favorite idioms, words@waywordradio.org, or call us to talk about any aspect of language.

That number is 877-929-9673.