“Tener sàbado inglès” literally means “to have an English Saturday”. The colloquial translation is “to work a half day on Saturday”.
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14Dec
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16Nov
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Andalucía is the Southern region of Spain which includes such famous cities as Sevilla, Cordóba, Granada and Málaga. A person from Andalucía is an “andaluz”. “decir andaluzadas” would literally translates to “to tell andalusianisms”. The idiomatic meaning is “to tell tall stories”.
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03Nov
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A Spanish equivalent of “that’s Greek to me” is “eso es árabe para mí”, which means “that’s Arabic for me”.
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16Oct
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The Spanish word for “blind”, as in a window treatment is “persiana”. This word comes from Persia. The term for a Venetian blind is “persiana veneciana”, which could be literally translated as “Venetian Persian”.
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26May
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When someone asks a lot of us, we say “to ask for the earth”. In Spanish, one equivalent phrase is “pedir el oro y el moro”, which means “to ask for the gold and the moor”. The Spanish equivalent of ”to promise the moon and the stars” is “prometer el oro y el moro”.
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17Jan
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When an American wants to emphasize how “American” he is he might say “as American as apple pie”. A Spaniard would say “Español de pura cepa”, which means “Spanish of pure stock”.
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14Jul
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When people are lined up in a row we call it “single file”. In Spanish, one might say “fila india”, which means “Indian file”.
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01Jul
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“Ser de mantequilla de Flandes” literally means “to be of butter of Flanders”. The idiomatic translation is “to be a weakling”.
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07Jan
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In a previous posting we have seen that “India ink” becomes “Chinese ink” or “tinta china” in Spanish. “Sudar tinta china” literally translates to “To sweat Chinese ink”. The colloquial equivalents in English are: “To sweat blood” or “to sweat bullets”.
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03Aug
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In the always dangerous category of nationalities, here are two colloquial terms.
“Cabeza de turco” literally means “Turk’s head”. Idiomatically it means “scapegoat” or “fall guy”.
“Llave inglesa’” or “English key” means “monkey wrench”.