Like an Angel Peeing on My Tongue

   Nuremburg, Germany, market square in March.

Every time we taste something so good we’re sure we’ve died and gone to heaven, Astrid says, “Als of er een engeltje op mijn tong piest.”  Loosely translated, “It’s like an angel peeing on my tongue.”

“How in Sam’s scratch can something so gross mean out-of-this-world delicious,” I asked her the first time she said it.  Her answer:  “Anything ‘angel’ is out-of-this-world good!”

Okay, then.

IDIOMS:  the utterly ecstatic and diabolical imps of language!   When words are combined in such a way that their figurative meanings can never be translated literally, they make the world go ‘round.

   

And that got me thinking about other Dutch idioms I hear almost every day here where I live (translated into English, of course):

You can’t walk on one leg.
(said when you offer second helpings of something)

What’s now hanging on my bike!
(what strange thing is happening now!)

Don’t put salt on every snail.
(don’t be a nag; don’t complain)

She got out of bed with the wrong leg.
(getting out of bed on the wrong side)

He was pulled off the toilet.
(he was talking nonsense)

The best pilots are standing on shore.
(back-seat drivers)

Be happy with a dead sparrow.
(be happy with nothing)

That is far from my bed.
(I don’t have to worry about it)

The sparrows dropped dead from the roof.
(it was so darn hot!)

Running the socks out of your shoes; driving the crease out of your pants.
(when the cars/bikes ride too close to you)

They’ll drive off the dike.
(when they see you looking/acting like that)

High water in the polder.
(pants are too short…”high-waters”)

You can walk over the heads.
(it’s so crowded)

He’s walking with windmills; he was hit by a windmill sail.
(he’s crazy)

He’s looked too deep into the glass.
(he’s drunk)

That person has loose hands; he should keep his hands at home.
(he’s always hitting someone; often refers to domestic violence)

Like pliers on a pig.
(nothing relates to anything)

Row with the oars you have.
(use what’s available)

And then Astrid will sometimes immediately follow with “You can’t say it to the Queen, of course” (it’s not proper Dutch).  HA!  And did you notice that sometimes the English meaning is also an idiom!

Surely you have your own idioms that make you giggle with glee and have one or two to share (with their meanings, of course)…unless you’re up to your ears in alligators and don’t have time?

A day not laughed is a day not lived!
(no translation needed)

You Can't Walk On One Leg

As long as I can remember, I have always loved language.  The study of it, that is.  I must have gotten it from Mom who, for instance, not only read The Lord of the Rings trilogy but studied Tolkien's appendix of the language he created.  I never went that far, nor does it mean I speak languages (as in plural) but I do enjoy how they work and the mathematical formulas behind them.

Perhaps nothing charms me more about language than idioms--those peculiar expressions that have a meaning indirectly derived from the literal words and which almost never have a direct translation into another language.  Some examples are beating around the bush, chewing the fat, enough is enough, every picture tells a story, etc., etc.

When the idioms come from another language than my own, they often are funnier or more powerful because I've never heard them in quite the same way.  A missionary-linguist friend told me years ago, for example, that the Filipino tribal group with whom she worked would often say, "That's just like God!" whenever they'd read or hear something they didn't expect.  To this day, I still use that phase when something surprises me.

So far here in Holland, as I get situated into this new culture and language, no one idiom has charmed me more than the one I have now heard several times:  You can't walk on one leg! I've heard it mostly in the context of eating and kissing, as when offered a second cookie or kissed twice...because you can't walk on one leg.  In other words, you can't eat/have just one!

The one time, however, that takes the cake (see what I mean) was when Astrid and I ate at our favorite Greek take-out café here in our neighborhood.  While most customers come and leave quickly with take-out, there are 5 tables for those of us who like the atmosphere and eat in.  With that kind of intimacy, we have grown to know the owner, his son and his mother, all of whom keep the business hopping.  Two weeks before our wedding in February, we told them how excited we were that a date had finally been set...an excitement they appeared to share with us.  That meal we celebrated with a bottle of their Kechri wine because we loved the shape of it and decided we'd make it into an oil lamp...and even told them so.

At the cash register as we left, to our delightful surprise, the son (with father looking over his shoulder) handed us another bottle of the same wine, gratis, and said, with a big grin,  "You can't walk on one leg!"  It was their congratulations to us.

How can you ever forget an idiom like that!  It makes you want to be generous and go out and do random acts of kindness just so you can say it all the time.  Ahhhh.  The power of language.  We could have a feeding frenzy with it!