4 ms·
Language is fascinating. I’ve found it interesting that two different cultures can have the exact same idioms. For example in English I say “goosebumps” while i
by wirthjason 5y ago
Language is fascinating. I’ve found it interesting that two different cultures can have the exact same idioms. For example in English I say “goosebumps” while in Japanese it’s exact same, tori-hara (鳥肌) or chicken skin. Both cultures map the concept to a bird’s skin.
On a separate linguistic note, you’d probably really love the book “Metaphors We Live By” by George Lakoff. It’s all about how languages have the power to hide and highlight. It blew my mind when I first read it.
- elliekelly 5y agoOne of my favorite wikipedia articles is “Cross-Linguistic Onomatopoeias”[1] because it’s fun to look at the similarities and differences. An article of cross-linguistic idioms would be even more interesting! But probably much more difficult to compile. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoeias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoei...
- CGamesPlay 5y agoCross-linguistic idioms would be interesting to see. I suspect it has a lot more to do with the etymology of the idioms than anything else. For example, I know that the idiom "I'm a big boy" (meaning "I am capable") works in English and Russian, but in Turkish it comes out sounding more like "I'm a large child". Actually, I found lots of idioms are identical in English/Russian (there are some unique ones to each language), and I suspect it comes from a shared European ancestry.