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I agree with your point about idioms many times being used without awareness of what they “actually” mean, and while I would still say it’s interesting for me t

I agree with your point about idioms many times being used without awareness of what they “actually” mean, and while I would still say it’s interesting for me to hear/see the idiom anyway, it’s not really the meat of where the “mind” is to me. There are dozens of examples I can think of, such as how people refer to themselves and to others (Japanese is especially interesting here), how people communicate spatial relationships/directions, and how people refer to body parts (calf in Portuguese literally translates as “potato of the leg”). It’s said that our language shapes how we think, and just the barest glimpse I’ve seen in to “literal” translations gives me a window in to not only how that’s true, but how particular languages can shape particular thought patterns.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
> There are dozens of examples I can think of, such as how people refer to themselves and to others (Japanese is especially interesting here), how people communicate spatial relationships/directions, and how people refer to body parts (calf in Portuguese literally translates as “potato of the leg”). The last one is surely an idiom, and the other parts are the ones that are often hard to translate literally. I wouldn't say that “the honorable front” as a translation would really do justice to the meaning of /omae/ in Japanese and how it differs from, say, /anata/. “the honorable front” is the literal meaning of /omae/, but it's again an idiom that Japanese speakers scarcely realize the origins of, though Japanese's ideographic spelling perhaps would serve to make speakers more aware of such origins.
- joshspankit 6y ago
  > The last one is surely an idiom What about French’s “potato” translating as “Apple of the ground”? In Canada that’s how bilingual packaging labels potatoes. This also I suppose raises an interesting question: is the boundary between idiom and word really that clear?

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

> There are dozens of examples I can think of, such as how people refer to themselves and to others (Japanese is especially interesting here), how people communicate spatial relationships/directions, and how people refer to body parts (calf in Portuguese literally translates as “potato of the leg”). The last one is surely an idiom, and the other parts are the ones that are often hard to translate literally. I wouldn't say that “the honorable front” as a translation would really do justice to the meaning of /omae/ in Japanese and how it differs from, say, /anata/. “the honorable front” is the literal meaning of /omae/, but it's again an idiom that Japanese speakers scarcely realize the origins of, though Japanese's ideographic spelling perhaps would serve to make speakers more aware of such origins.

joshspankit 6y ago
> The last one is surely an idiom What about French’s “potato” translating as “Apple of the ground”? In Canada that’s how bilingual packaging labels potatoes. This also I suppose raises an interesting question: is the boundary between idiom and word really that clear?