The German idiom Ich glaub mein Schwein pfeift is used to express tremendous surprise. Literally, it means, “I think my pig is whistling!” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “German Whistling Pig Idiom”
You know, Germans have a lot of idioms involving pigs, and one that I really like is, Ich glaube mein Schwein pfeift, which means, I think my pig is whistling, which is what you say if you’re utterly surprised about something that you never expected to happen.
And do some people call guinea pigs whistle pigs? That just reminds me. You know, we’ve had a call about whistle pigs. Is it guinea pigs? I want to say it’s marmots or marmotsets. I think I had to apologize to marmots for saying they were a size they weren’t.
Whatever size they are, we approve of the size of the marmots. That’s right. But, you know, the good thing about this is you can find all of our past episodes on our website, waywordradio.org. So we could go check that out right now. You can send us an email if you’ve got questions, words@waywordradio.org.
