Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture

Hi!

Carsten Becker <naranoieati@...> writes:
> On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, 07:45 CET, caeruleancentaur wrote:
>
>  > German: es regnet Bindfaden/Strippen/in Strömen, it is
>  > raining > threads/strings/in streams; es gießt wie mit
>  > Mollen/Scheffeln, it > pours as if with beer-glasses
>  > (I love this one!)/bushels.
Most of these I've never heard.  Carsten's examples are much more
common and well-known to me, too:

> My environment says "Es regnet Bindfäden". Or just
> (classmates), "Es pisst" (It's pissing). Quite often, you
> can hear "Es regnet wie aus Eimern/Kübeln" as well.
> "Es regnet in Strömen" is common as well, although to me
> it sounds rather bookish.
Instead of 'regnen', you could also use 'gießen' (='to pour') in most
cases (but not with 'Bindfäden').  Or simply just use it in isolation:
'Es gießt'.  Also, 'es schüttet' (~'pours').  And to not use 'pissen'
explicitly, you can use 'schiffen' just like in most other contexts,
too. :-)   (Originally, it means essentially nothing, stem obviously
'Schiff' ('ship'), but used due to sound similarity).

My dialect also has: 'Es plästert ['plE:st6t].'  But that's probably
heavy dialect and completely incomprehensible to other Germans without
context.  But it means nothing else, just 'heavy rain'.

**Henrik