Re: Idioms (was Website update)

Sally Caves wrote:

>Tom Wier wrote:
>> Here's another interesting
>> topic that I haven't seen much on the list before (at least that
>> I can remember):  idioms.  What idioms do people have in their
>> languages?
>
>This topic was raised a year ago, when I first logged on.
>Matt Pearson has some good ones.  Ask him about "empty thunder."
"Empty thunder" means a lot of pointless noise or hubbub, much ado
about nothing, sound and fury signifying nothing, etc..  Skimming
through the Tokana-to-English dictionary, I find a few more:

To "carry tree trunks" is to show off.

To "invert one's opinion" is to change one's mind.

"Convincing the sheep to eat grass" means exerting a lot of energy
on a task which really doesn't require that much effort, or to go
to the trouble of convincing someone who already share's ones
views ('preaching to the choir', we call it).

To "take oneself from the eyes" is to disappear.

To "release one's will" means to give up, give in, surrender.

To "speak heart words" means to speak sincerely or earnestly, and
to "speak wind words" is to dissemble or speak facetiously.

If I say "his door is silent" it means he's never at home when
people come to visit.  (This one was inspired by a Malagasy
idiom, "he has a white door".)

If food is filling, the Tokana say that it "sits in the stomach",
and if a topic of conversation is interesting, they say that it
"sits in the mind".

To be nauseous is to "have one's guts roll around".

Red wine and white wine are, respectively, "shadow wine" and
"gold wine" (or "sunrise wine").

If someone "has guts" it doesn't mean that they're brave
(as in English) but rather that they have integrity, or that
they're sincere, honest, open, or humane.  To call someone
a "guts person" (koin matsak) is rather like a Jewish person
calling someone a "mensch".

To "follow the steps of time-flow (kilhop)" is to keep track of
the passage of time.

To "pull breath" is to gasp for air.

Finally, there's the expression "legs for the rabbit", which is
part of an old proverb, "eyes for the owl, legs for the rabbit",
meaning "each according to his abilities" or "make do with what
you have" or "make use of your natural talents".

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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