You must log in or register to comment.
“It’s Raining Men” and “Let The Bodies Hit The Floor” are actually one song
Yup! Just told from very different perspectives.
Reminds me of the Rice Krispies onomatopoeic noises in different languages:
English: Snap! Crackle! Pop! Danish: Pif! Paf! Puf! Swedish: Piff! Paff! Puff! German: Knisper! Knasper! Knusper! Spanish: Pim! Pam! Pum! Finnish: Riks! Raks! Poks! French: Cric! Crac! Croc! Dutch: Pif! Paf! Pof! Afrikaans: Knap! Knetter! Knak! Belgium: Poos! Pas! Pes!Interesting that English is the only language where this isn’t alliterative.
I think the list is kind of intentionally misleading to provide that assumption.
The non-English ones are all translations of whatever that language uses as its onomatopoeia that represents any quick succession of sounds.
In English, Snap Crackle Pop is most known as the slogan of Rice Krispies cereal. The saying was not common speech in English until 1932, when the then-5-year-old brand used the phrase in radio jingles for the first time.
The universal English equivalent to any of those would probably be something more like “bang bang bang”. Or in British English they say “bish bash bosh” which would be a true direct translation. In American English we dropped that saying, so our closest equivalent would probably be “wham, bam, thank you ma’am”
While you are correct, I feel it’s important to point out how lately you’ve been missing your ‘outside enrichments’…
I love how sometimes language unites us and sometimes it makes us humorously question the sanity of anyone too different from us 😄
Slovaks use “wheelbarrows” not tractors
Czechs say wheelbarrows too, specifically the open ones that cannot carry liquids without loading them with buckets. In fact, our way of saying them (trakař) is easier to confuse with Tracker (German for tractor) than the Slovak tragáč, the latter coming clearly from German tragen (carry). Not to be confused with the more common sheet metal wheelbarow, which is kolečko (Bohemian) / tůčko (Moravian) / fúrik (Slovak).
In France we have a few more:
Il pleut des cordes (It’s raining ropes) Il pleut à sceau (It’s raining buckets) Il tombe des hallebardes (it’s raining halberds)
I’m also quite partial to “on s’est fait saucer”, literally “we got sauced”, which refers to getting soaked in the rain.
Do French people generally know what a Halberd is? Because I think at least in Canada only RPG nerds and medieval history nerds have ever heard that word before…
The French do know how to decapitate heads. Usually they use a guillotine, but I guess they also know a halbard for when the guillotine is out of order.
The halberd expression I’ve only personally heard once from my wife who is a walking French expression generator. There’s a new one every other day. I generally hear the rope expression used a lot more.
According to this expression it’s “frequent” but no idea what that means: https://www.lesexpressions.fr/expression/il-tombe-des-hallebardes
Au Québec on dit encore “Pleuvoir à siaux”, bien que c’est le seul temps qu’on utilise encore cette vieille forme du mot sceaux. Par contre, jamais entendu l’expression des vaches ou des hallebardes
L’expression des vaches est assez fréquente en France mais très vulgaire donc on ne l’utilise pas aussi souvent que pleuvoir des cordes par exemple.
J’ai pris la saucé 😁
Norwegian here. Never heard the troll one before. Might be from a different part of the country. We have a lot of other sayings about rain though.
Det regner trollkjerringer
It’s raining like a troll’s jerking it?
“Dat regnar så på Bergen” should be an expression
frogs or “like from a pot” (polish)
what the hell happened to esteri to get that honor
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kuin_Esterin_perseestä
One urban legend has it that Esteri was the goddess of rain in pre-Christian Finland, but in fact the name is of Biblical origin. Another folk etymology suggests the phrase derives from Esteri, a brand of water pumps used by fire brigades.
Brazil: Canivetes (pocket knives)
pé d’água caindo o céu entre outros
Canivete aberto (open pocket knives) for emphasis, if it’s really strong rain.
Is there something about troll squirting that only the Norwegians know about?
What did the Slovakians say before tractors were invented?
Luckily, tractors and the first instance of rain arrived in Slovakia on the very same day.
Very arid country with exhausted draft horses until that day.
It’s raining.
- Slovaks before tractors were invented
as @username@leminal.space said, slovaks use “wheelbarrows” not tractors
We say it’s raining pipe ends.
Pipe stems, I think
Sticks I think, as in broomsticks (bezemstelen)
In romanian, its “its raining with the bucket”
Pipe sticks (The Netherlands) (het regent pijpenstelen)
Other option: tuberculosis hard. (het regent tering hard)
More like pipe stems, no? As in the stems of pipes for smoking tobacco.
Also used: it’s dog weather (het is hondenweer)
I was thinking about broomstick stelen. But yeah, ‘stem’ makes sense.
Hondenweer technically is about the weather in general, not rain specifically. A snow blizzard or a storm can also be hondenweer.
Fun fact: when it’s raining, but the sun is shining, we say the Devil is beating his wife. Southeast USA, btw. I can see how some of these sayings came to be, but this one has never, ever made sense to me.
In France, I believe they say that he’s beating his wife and marrying his daughter. Very interesting.
It makes me feel better that we’re not the only ones. Maybe there’s some kind of common thread. There were a lot of French Protestant immigrants here in South Carolina prior to the American Revolution.
“It’s raining tractors” sounds like a way better song than that one about tacos.
I prefer tacos over tractors when it comes to having a lunch or things raining from the sky
