A Turkish proverb translates as “If your mouth is burned by milk, you blow before you eat yogurt,” meaning that if you’ve had a bad experience with one thing, you’ll be cautious when encountering something similar. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Turkish Milk Proverb”
I found a great Turkish proverb.
In translation, it goes, if your mouth is burnt by milk, you blow before you eat yogurt.
Right.
It’s a burned once.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah, or Burn Child Fears the Fire or something like that.
Burn Child Fears the Fire, yeah.
But if your mouth is burnt by milk, you blow before you eat yogurt.
That’s absolutely true.
Yeah, I feel like I’m going to start blowing on my yogurt before I eat it.
It reminds me of a woman who watched our boy when we were a kid.
She was from Trinidad.
She had the loveliest voice.
And one of the things that she taught my son when he was about six months old is to not go near the radiator in our Brooklyn apartment.
Yeah.
And she had a rhythm.
Then she would say, no, no, no, no, no, and wave her finger.
My son did that for years.
Oh, really?
Yeah, so there’s a remnant of Carol in the house for a long time in the mouths of my little boy.
No, no, no, no, no.
I don’t know why they reminded me of that.
Oh, that’s nice.
Share your family memories about language, 877-929-9673, or send them to us in email.
The address is words@waywordradio.org.
