In a futile situation, English speakers might say that we’re spinning our wheels. The French have a phrase for the same situation that translates as “pedal in sauerkraut.” The Illustrated Book of Sayings collects similarly colorful idioms in other languages. There’s a Turkish expression that literally translates as “grapes darken by looking at each other,” meaning that we’re influenced by the company we keep. In Latvian, there’s an expression that means “to prevaricate,” but literally it translates as “to blow little ducks (out of one’s mouth).” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Pedal in Sauerkraut”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, a show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. In English, if you’re at a loss or you’ve stopped making progress and you’re otherwise stymied, you might say you’re spinning your wheels or something like that.
But in French, one way to say that translates as you’ve pedaled into the sauerkraut.
Pedaled into the sauerkraut.
Yeah, isn’t that gorgeous? I mean, can you imagine pedaling your bicycle into a whole bunch of sauerkraut? I think that’s so much more evocative. Definitely in the weeds there.
Yeah. I got this from a beautiful little book that just came out called The Illustrated Book of Sayings. It’s by Ella Francis Sanders. And there are wonderful phrases in this book from all parts of the world. I won’t try the original language, but in Turkish, there’s a proverb that translates as grapes darken by looking at each other. Can you imagine what that means? Grapes darken.
I don’t know.
It’s like we resemble the company that we keep.
Oh, of course.
You know, that notion that you’re the average of the five people you spend most of your time with.
Oh, interesting.
Grapes darken by looking at each other.
And there’s a Latvian phrase that translates as blow little ducks.
And that means they’re not telling the truth.
If somebody’s not telling the truth, you say they’re blowing little ducks. Little ducks are like popping out of their mouth, little fuzzy ducklings are popping out of their lungs.
Pust pilates.
Pust pilates.
They’re so picturesque, and proverbs and idioms often contain so much wisdom.
So I’m going to share some more of those later in the show.
If you’d like to talk to us about anything related to language, we’ll talk about slang, a new word, something you heard, something you said, how to write well, how to speak well, 877-929-9673.
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