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In Denmark we have a bunch of weird ones: When there isn't a problem: "There is no cow on the ice"/ Der er ingen ko på isen
When you're helping someone when it would be better they did it themselves you're doing them "a bears favor" / en bjørnetjeneste
When you want it both ways but cant: "You want to blow with flour in your mouth" / blæse med mel i munden. This always made more sense to me than the english, you cant have your cake and eat it too.
When something is complete gibberish, it "sounds like volapyk" / lyder som volapyk. Volapyk is an actual made-up language like esperanto. incedentaly the same expression also exists in Esperanto
and i'm sure there is more
“To get the cow from the ice” (“Die Kuh vom Eis kriegen”) is a german phrase meaning to solve an urgent problem.
I always had problems with that idiom in English, until someone pointed to me that it's backwards just because it sounds better, it means "You can't eat your cake and have it too", i.e. if you eat the cake you don't have it anymore, so you can't both have and eat it at the same time.
This idiom confused me for the longest time, because I use "have" and "eat" very interchangeably. "Are you going to have dinner?" etc. I didn't see that, rather, they meant "have" as a synonym for "keep".
And yeah, it's definitely backwards. "Have" doesn't suggest "will have", it's a present term only. I have a cake, can I eat it? Yes. Switching the order makes more sense. Furthermore, I think "keep" at least suggests long term.
I propose "You can't eat your cake and keep it too"
Yet still, who ever eats a whole cake? I definitely keep some for later.
Have and eat are both present looking to the future in this insane. Like have it in the future if you eat it now. It does make sense, but I do understand your gripe
I remember learning it as a semi-historical idiom, that nice white cakes and frostings could be expensive, so poor people would pay to have a pretty looking cake that's mostly for show that's like a prop or for a nice tasting cake that doesn't look grand or large. Old guy could have been telling a tale though.
Oh I like this one
In French we would say « You can’t have the butter and the butter’s money »
One usual extension of the expression is « You can’t have the butter, the butter’s money and the creamer’s butt »
When there’s no reason to hurry « y a pas le feu au lac » (« the lake isn’t on fire »)
Bears Favor exists in German too (jemandem einen Bärendienst erweisen)
In Dutch we say “This might as well be Turkish”, if something makes no sense.
If I recall correctly, I Turkish they call complete gibberish “Chinese”, and Mandarin just straight skips to “ethereal writing”.
You can definitely see which one's the more difficult language, here.