I really like the german "Geburtstagskind". It refers to a Person whose birthday is today but literally translates to "birthday child". However you use it for any age. If its your grandfathers 80st birthday he still is the birthday child this day. Usually people just use the word without thinking about it , but i really like the idea that everyone can get childish again on their birthday. :)
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
41 points (95.6% liked)
No Stupid Questions
36727 readers
1871 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
"Lukee kuin piru Raamattua" (Finnish).
Literally "to read like the Devil reads the Bible".
Meaning to examine something in bad faith. Never heard it used it in context of the Bible or anything religious, but eg. when interpreting law or contract, looking for the details that could be twisted for your purpose, rather than what the text attempts to convey.
"Das geht mir am Arsch vorbei."
German for I don't give a damn about that.
Literally: it passes by my ass.
You can also lift it up to a SFW level by saying "Das geht mir hinten vorbei." (It passes behind me), or strengthen it with "Das geht mir weit hinten vorbei." (It passes far behind me).
In Khmer, there's a phrase "មិនដឹងខ្យល់" which literally translates to "Doesn't know wind" as in they're so dumb they don't even know what wind is.
I guess it's kind of like calling someone an air head but from a different angle.
Here's one in Egyptian Arabic: "He who gets burnt by soup will blow on yoghurt", meaning that someone who gets hurt once will bexome careful not to repeat the experience.
I really like this! Getting burnt so bad that you'd blow on something cold like ice out of fear.
In colloquial English, you can say that someone is an idiot with the construction "you absolute [noun]" or "you complete [noun]" or similar.
It doesn't actually matter what the noun is, but it works better the more obscure or specific the thing is. For example "you absolute saucepan", "you complete hose pipe", or my personal favourite "you absolute strawberry plant".
One of my favorite youtubers Octavius King demonstrates this really well by using "complete and utter desk" as a derogatory term for the worst offenders to intellect.
On ne peut pas avoir le beurre et l'argent du beurre (We can't have the butter and the butter's money)
This one would be the French equivalent of "You can't eat cake and have it"
Tomber dans les pommes (Falling in apples)
This is an expression to describe fainting
Tailler une pipe (Carving a pipe)
Give a blowjob
Esperanto
krokodili- verb, literally something like "to crocodile"
It means when an Esperanto-speaker speaks in a language other than Esperanto while amongst other Esperanto-speakers.
No one's quite sure why that's the term for it, most likely because crocodiles have a big mouth.
When I learned that, it suddenly made a lot of sense why Duolingo taught me the word for "crocodile" so early.
Referencing an unpopular future possibility - “that’ll go over like a turd in a punch bowl”
Describing something you don’t miss - “I miss that like I’d miss a case of the clap”
Rain coming in at a weird angle - “this rain is like a cow pissing on a flat rock”
When someone says they wish some specific thing would happen - “wish in one, shit in the other, see which one fills up first”
When you’re unenthusiastic about something - “I’d rather shit in my hands and clap”
An example as if I was talking to you: "I'll wack you like an octopus" which technically already describes the action, however traditionally in my country after catching octopus in order to properly kill them and soften them up, fishermen basically smack/wacked them on the ground maniacally.
And I think it's become such a popular figure of speech because that mental image is hilarious and I love using it.
What language is that in, English? :)
此地无银三百两—literally "this location does not hide 15kg of silver". imagine a sign saying that with an arrow pointing downwards
What does that mean?
At a guess, to call attention to something by trying to hide it
"Butt fuck Egypt (BFE)," when referring to being in the middle of nowhere or the far edges of a parking area. For example, Sally complained to her friend in the food court, "I had to park all the way in BFE. I'm dreading the walk back to the car."
Bruh where is this?
New England, at least. BFE is half the state of Maine, but also the furthest spots in the Hannaford parking lot.
Growing up in the Midwest, I've heard BFE countless times.
"Jeg bryr meg katta"
literally "I care like a cat", meaning "I don't care in the slightest and talking more about it is an insult to my time".
It's fallen mostly out of use, but I'm hanging on.
That’s such a cool phrase though
are you perchance Norwegian? jeg lærer norsk (faren min er norsk, det er teknisk sett andrespråket mitt men jeg bruker det ikke mye. nå jeg lærer mer)
hvis du er dansk, jeg beklager at forveksler de to, men hvis du er norsk, det er hyggelig å se folk som snakker språket
ikke bry deg, dansk bruker "mig". jeg glemte
Haha, ikke noe problem. Godt observert!
Hehe. Selv om vi nordmenn er litt brutale i språket og ofte tolkes som uhøflige, så betyr «ikke bry deg» noe sånt som «mind your own business». «Glem det» (never mind) fungerer kanskje bedre.
I don't speak German, but I picked up a few phrases for work. They have a few idioms that I think of sometimes:
"Ich glaub, ich spinne" which means I think I'm crazy, but literally translates to "I think, I spider." It's a great visual metaphor, being overwhelmed by the threads going everywhere that you imagine you're a spider spinning a web, and also you've entirely forgotten grammar.
"Bahnhof verstehen" or "Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof" means "I understand only the train station." It's something you say when you don't understand anything, you're completely lost, and you don't give a shit becaue you just want to get the fuck home.
I might be off on those translations or the subtext, but that's how I understood it.
The "Bahnhof verstehen" comes from the notion that many people learning a foreign language start with some simple sentences like "Can you tell me the way to the train station". So people who only "Bahnhof verstehen" (OK, horrible grammar here) have not proceed past the first lesson.
and also you've entirely forgotten grammar.
That's a misinterpretation. The German "spinne" is a proper verb in that sentence, like "to spin" in English.
So it can be what a spider does, but also what political doctors do, and the latter is the context here?
Not fluent at all, but I always parsed "Ich glaub, ich spinne" as "I feel like my head is spinning"
No, it's not "spin" like a top or top be dizzy. There's a bunch of meanings, and some are similar to those two, but none fit for dizzy.
"Head is spinning" is a metaphor. Literally tanslating metaphors doesn't usually work, which is why this thread is interesting
前世害左你么？(In Cantonese/Taishanese)
Did I hurt you in your previous incarnation?
Parents always say this when they get mad.
I guess it translate to "What did I do in my previous life to deserve a shitty kid like you?"
So a round-about way of just saying trash-talking their kid basically.
I always respons, "So why did you hurt me in my my previous life?"
Or "Yea you hur me in my previous life and I reincarnated here for revenge" 🤣
(Who the fucked coined that phrase, why is reincarnation brought up wtf lol)
"Correo de las brujas" translates to "the witches' mail" and means gossip or rumors. Kind of like "heard it through the grapevine" or a "a little birdie told me"
You're mustard
English. It's a good thing, means the person is awesome.
You're mustard for teaching me this!
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Oddly meaning, you act like your dumbass parent.
~~Kill two birds with one stone.~~ Get two birds stoned at once. 😎
Stone two birds with one hit.