--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Tom Chappell <tomhchappell@Y...>
wrote:
>Yet Another Survey Question from Tom H.C. in MI;
>His elevator doesn't go all the way to the top.
>He doesn't have both oars in the water.
>He's a few bricks shy of a full load.
>His lights are on, but there's nobody home.
>(Alternatively:
Nice house -- nobody home.)
>He's not playing with a full deck.
>He couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed
on the heel.
>He's so dense, light bends around him.
>His mind is write-protected.
>If what you don't know can't hurt you, he's practically
>invulnerable.
>It's hard to believe he beat 100,000 other sperm.
>He's one prayer short of absolution.
>He's playing baseball with a rubber bat.
>He's running U.S. appliances on British current.
>He's several nuts over fruitcake minimum.
>The cheese slid off his cracker.
>He couldn't find his own ass with a map and a compass.
>He's overdue for reincarnation.
>He is proof that God has a sense of humor.
>He couldn't hit sand if he fell off a camel.
>He couldn't spell "cat" if you spotted him the "C" and the "A".
>He forgot to pay his brain bill.
>He was hiding behind the door the day the brains were handed out.
>He's skating on the wrong side of the ice.
I'm having trouble considering the preceding to be idioms, but I'm
not sure why. I see them as attempts by the pop culture (Hollywood)
to be clever & they may be funny in the original context, but I
don't think they'll last. How long have we been saying in
English, "It's raining cats & dogs"? That to me is an idiom,
grammatically correct but semantically nonsensical. The above
phrases are grammatically correct, but they are not nonsensical.
There is a transference of meaning, but the sentences still somehow
ring true. There may be no such thing as a brain bill, there never
was a day when brains were handed out, one can't skate on the wrong
side of the ice, yet in some way they are logical. It is never
possible for it to rain cats and dogs, but the transferred meaning
is quite clear, at least for speakers of English.
Equivalent expressions in other languages are more logical.
Spanish: llueve a cántaros, it is raining by the buckets.
French: il pleut des hallebardes, it is raining halberds.
Italian: piove a catinelle, it is raining by the basins.
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.
These all speak to the large quantity or the fierceness of the rain,
but are somehow logical. "It is raining cats and dogs" is not
logical. Yet I can't say that an idiomatic expression has to be
logical. Maybe I want an idiom to have stood the test of time!
I'm just reflecting out loud.
I have not yet started to create such idiomatic expressions in
Senjecan, but I can start here.
rijáðrëßômi nimêrsa.
rijáðr-ëß-ôm-i n-i-µêrs-a.
waterfall-great-mutative-pl. it-pres. time-rain-indicative
great-waterfalls it-rains.
ß [dz)] = augmentative suffix.
µ = m_0
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur