I just like it

[deelaundry]

Found this obsolete Russian quote on wikipedia:

Щи да каша — пища наша (Shchi da kashá ― píshcha nashá.) (obsolete)
/ɕːi dʌ kʌˈʃa ― ˈpiɕːʌ nʌˈʃa/
"Cabbage stew and buckwheat is our food.", c.f. English, "it doesn't matter who is in charge because we still starve anyway."

Comments

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

Buckwheat happens to be very tasty if you know how to cook it right.

My favorite obscure saying is from Spain: "I have a nice jacket in France."

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

What does it mean?

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

I think the gist of it is that what you have might be held in higher esteem somewhere else - that everything is relative.

It came up in the game "Wise and Otherwise," where you try to complete various sayings from around the world.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

That makes sense!

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

Plus, you know...any excuse to make fun of France.

[roga.livejournal.com]

Ha! I like it. It's funny, how weird different phrases sound if you don't know their cultural context...

[purridot.livejournal.com]

It's funny, how weird different phrases sound if you don't know their cultural context

Too true! A French friend of mine once brought me Christmas gift she'd been given -- a tea towel with "The Twelve Days of Christmas" printed on it (the "partridge in a pear tree" etc.)-- because she was completely bewildered about what it could *possibly* mean and had been too shy to ask the gift giver ;-)

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

My older son had some questions about that song, too! :D

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Way back when (junior high?) in Spanish class there was a segment on jokes and how those often don't carry well even between different Spanish-speaking countries. The only one I remember was the one about the stubborn man from Basque who ate soap insisting that it was cheese. When someone asked him how it tasted, he said, "Pretty good, but a little bit like soap."

Heh.

[poorfrances.livejournal.com]

Random historical tidbit the buckwheat thing reminded me of: they used to can thistle, aka tumbleweed, in the Dust Bowl during the Depression. Thistle had been imported to the area by the Russians. It wasn't tasty by any strecth of the imagination but there was no other vegetation and it prevented some people from starving.

[daisylily.livejournal.com]

I love things like that - I like the way that some make sense and some you just go "Bwuh?"