Re: USAGE: Inventing gunpowder & idioms

FFlores wrote:

> I just posted something about inventing gunpowder
> to the Conculture list, and it remembered me of
> a curious idiom in Spanish:
>
>   _descubrir la p=F3lvora (verde)_
>   "to discover (green) gunpowder"
>
> meaning "to say something that is obvious,
> but looking as if it were a great discovery"
> (this is supposed to be said in an ironic tone).
>
> Does anybody's con- or natlang have a similar
> expression?
Tokana has an expression that's similar to this:
"tefita iasanosa neile lhes", literally "to convince
the sheep to eat grass".  If someone is convincing
the sheep to eat grass, it means they're working
very hard to do something which takes no effort
at all.  (In terms of equivalent idioms in English,
this one straddles the fence between preaching
to the choir and making a mountain out of a
molehill...)

Matt.