Your favorite "slang" expression

    We were talking in the Translation thread about how hard it can be to use a computer translator to make sense of idiomatic or slang expressions. I'm sure all of us who speak English have more than a few that we know have baffled people trying to learn our twisted language. I'd be interested to hear a few from other languages, as well.

    So I'll start with my favorite German expression my Opa von Steiner used to use on me: "Aufgehe!" If you put it into a translator, you'd probably get something on the order of "Get out!" Really, it means "Get up! (out of bed)".

    My favorite English nonsense expression is "by the way". It can mean "oh, while I'm saying this, I'll add something", or "just incidentally, I noticed (fill in the blank)". But you can also say you left something (or someone) "by the way(side)", meaning you lost it or abandoned it. And you can also use it to mean you actually found something lying next to the road. Which leads to "stumbled upon", which isn't the same as "stumbled over"...

    Oh, we could go on in that vein forever. But what's your favorite confusing phrase you know from your own language or from having been confounded by it in another?

    Filipino friend from Manila laughs when I make spaghetti. She calls it, "pansit with tomatos". Pansit is a Filipino noodle dish with all kinds of stuff mixed in, kinda like how I make my veggie spaghetti.
    Visited friends in Eastern Pennsylvania - Penn Dutch Country I'm told - and the phrase that got me floored was, "Outen the light." I'm told it means "Turn off the light." Yeah, I was very confused there for a bit.

    And something here in Hawaii that for us here is every day slang, but for a certain group of European people, gets confusing. We say, "Portagee" meaning a very stupid, ignorant or naive person - but is sometimes confused with "Portuguese" meaning people from Portugal. Depending on how well you know certain people, and how thick the pidgin-English-accent being spoken is, the two words are flipped back and forth and can be derogatory or used as a term of endearment. Seriously, it really confuses people who are not in the know. Gets interesting when I'm talking to a cousin (who is a portagee-Portuguese). Being a local, I get it. But my cousin being from Brazil, gets very confused. Poor girl!

    In remembrance of Valentine's Day :P

    I was an exchange student in Italy several years ago. What I found weird is that in Italian there's two kind of love. The passionate way and more innocent way. "I love you" can be translated 2 different ways in Italian. There's the literal "ti amo" (ti=you, amo= I love) that no one really uses.. maybe real lovers as husband and wife etc. And then there's this phrase everyone uses "ti voglio bene" which tanslates I want you well ( I guess it can mean 2 things; I want you to be well or I want you in a good way. As of now I haven't really worked that out which one it is...). And this "ti voglio bene" phare is used when spoken to friends, boy/girlfriends, family/siblings.

    I remember saying "Vi amo" (vi=plural you) to my host family and to my friends and they all corrected me that I should say "Vi voglio bene". Meh.

    And all Italians out there maybe you can clarify what "ti voglio bene" really translates in to!?!

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    I can't think of any special expressions in German right now. I'm sure I use a lot, especially in Styrian dialect, but as with other everyday stuff you hardly notice it doing.

    @Zoa, re Pennsylvania Dutch: That is a very fascinating language as it´s a mix of several German dialects and English (and Texas German, too). When I read or hear that I can usually understand most of it. ^^
    Same with Hutterite German, which is also a mix of Austrian German dialects (but mainly Carinthian nowadays) and English. It´s just so funny to listen to. :D

    Re my favourite English nonsense expression: that would probably be "I´m not sure". I hear that a lot in a lot of TV shows and it is an absolutely meaningless expression. X/

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    I agree with Tru. It absolutely has meaning. "I'm not sure" is similar to "I'm not certain" - saying that the first has no meaning is saying that the second has no meaning, and that's absolutely not true. It's similar in meaning to "I don't know" except that it is usually proceeded by another statement, and the "I'm not sure" indicates that you aren't entirely certain about your knowledge. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

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    I love English for sentences that look very similar but have totally different meaning. Like "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana". Or "Naked conductor ran along the train" (which is even used in linguistics textbooks).

    About the I'm not sure -thing. I kind of understand that some phrases have no meaning as there're phares I can not translate into my language fully. Or I can but it has a little different meaning. That's what I like about different languages, there's stuff you can't translate without loosing the exact meaning. :)

    Quote from Alia

    I love English for sentences that look very similar but have totally different meaning. Like "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana". Or "Naked conductor ran along the train" (which is even used in linguistics textbooks).

    Alia, You can tell that to a Finn: "Kun lakkaa satamasta, haetaan lakkaa satamasta" translates to "when it stops raining, let's pick up lacquer from the harbor". Or maybe my personal favourite: "Keksijä Keksi keksittiin keksimään keksi. Keksijä Keksi keksi keksin. Keksittyään keksin, keksijä Keksi keksi keksin keksityksi". Tells a story of a inventor who invents a cookie (to invent and cookie has similiar word in Finnish). Sometimes it can be really confusing :wacko:

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    I remember the first time that my friend said 'What are you up to?' to me and I totally misunderstood it... I guessed it like 'What do you want?/What are you looking for' for the reason no one knows...while the true meaning is 'What are you doing?'...

    It's really confusing as English is not my native language and people here keep using slang in daily life. :p


    -Currently learning German-
    <3

    I worked with a Hawai'ian man several years ago. He suggested not even trying to understand some of the pidgin or slang expressions if I ever went there. He told me a few, but I've forgotten over 15 years. But I have had pansit, as I work with a lot of Filipina nurses. Veggie spaghetti = pansit with tomatoes = hilarious.

    I've been to Italy and dated an Italian, and I still don't understand all the subtleties of many of the expressions. Not that I know that many. I'm not sure of the one you broached.

    I'm afraid I used the word "nonsense" in my original post, meaning words or expressions that seem to make no sense in literal terms, but have meaning in idiomatic language. So I'm sure that's what Idril was referring to.

    I love the Finnish confusion. It's interesting and amusing, and just what I was after with this thread.

    Where I come from, in Appalachia (West Virginia), we say, "What are you about?" for "What are you doing?" if you're actively engaged in something. If it's something we can help you do, we will. But we still use, "What are you up to?" or "What are you doing (now, later, lately--which means "recently" or "since I saw you last")?" as a general greeting. And "Where you at?" is perfectly acceptable there as a substitute for "Where are you?"
    And, of course, if there is more than one person being addressed it's "you two" or "you all". Which is what even Americans doing Southern impersonations get wrong all the time--"you all" is always plural, because English seems to be one of the only languages without a satisfactory form for the plural "you".

    I've always thought that "you" is plural case. As there is the old form "thou". I imagined English speaking people have been just so polite that they always addressed others formally, so the you stuck and now it's used for both singular and plural cases.

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    Quote from Shelybear

    I remember the first time that my friend said 'What are you up to?' to me and I totally misunderstood it... I guessed it like 'What do you want?/What are you looking for' for the reason no one knows...while the true meaning is 'What are you doing?'...


    Oh, that's one I sometimes have fun with. Here are some of my smart-alec replies to people when they try to ask how I'm doing:

    "What's new?" I reply: "C over lambda." (Mathematical expression: nu = c / lambda.) Or "A two-horned herbivore from Africa" ("gnu" instead of "new") or "A wildebeest" (same as latter).
    "What's up?" My reply: "The sky" or "the ceiling" or "The price of fish in Cambodia" (or some other random country).
    "What are you up to?" I reply: "About 5'5"." (They want to know what I'm up to, so I give them my height.)

    I really hate answering questions like that most of the time. My feeling is that the person generally doesn't REALLY care, and it's also none of their business. So I give smart-alec replies. :)

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    My Garden - My Dragon Cave Scroll

    I consider 'you' as singular most of the time. So when I try to refer to more than one person, I use something like 'you two', 'you all' and 'you guys' to make it clear. I'm really curious on whether native English-speaking people consider it singular or plural, though.


    -Currently learning German-
    <3

    Grammatically, "you" is both singular and plural. It's a nightmare in practical spoken English, though, as one often can't tell if someone is addressing you, yourself or if they are addressing the group you are in. And there's that "they" cropping up in that last sentence. It's American English's compromise because there is no good singular neuter third person pronoun. It's either "he" or "she", and often if you are speaking in general terms, it can be a problem of assigning gender to a hypothetical person when none is meant.
    Also, "you" is used as in "anyone", as in "you have to be careful about who you date". It's meant as a general statement, but can sound like it's directed at one person (the listener), in which case the speaker might be seen as insulting or being too personal.

    Edited once, last by froglady (February 24, 2015 at 4:16 AM).

    I agree it can be confusing to know whether one is speaking to singular or plural you.. Same in Finnish (it's my first language if that hasn't been obvious enough.. :P) we don't have gender in our he/she. it's same word "hän" for both. It's really confusing especially if you read a translated book where they just use the word "hän" instead of a name or something that reveals the gender. I've couple times thought some characters to be different gender than they really were + animals or non-humans are usually refered as "it" , also genderless (Hedwig from HP will always be boy to me!! :D).

    Here when you ask "what's up" or "how are you doing" you literally ask "what are you hearing". So some smart a** people, me included, can answer that everything that is sopken laudly.. :P

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