“No hay perro ni gato que no lo sepa” translates to “there’s no dog or cat that doesn’t know it”. Another animal based idiom to describe “common knowledge” is “eso lo sabe hasta el gato”, which literally means “even the cat knows that”.
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06Dec
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29Nov
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When two people are “two of a kind” we say “they’re cut from the same cloth”. Spanish has a similar phrase: “ser del mismo paño”. This translates to “to be of the same cloth”.
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28Nov
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When someone is moving around a lot we use the term “fidgety” or the phrase “to have ants in one’s pants”. An equivalent idiomatic phrase in Spanish is “moverse màs que el rabo de una lagartija”. The literal translation is “to move around more than the tail of a lizard”.
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17Nov
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I like this one. A Spanish version of “crowbar” is “pie de cabra”. This means “goat’s foot”. Don’t know whether crowbar has anything to do with a crow. Anyone know?
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15Nov
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“Armar màs ruido que un buey por un tejado”. The translation is “to make more noise than an ox on a roof”. I can’t think offhand of an equivalent phrase in English, but it does remind one of “like a bull in a china shop”.
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07Nov
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In English we describe a voracious eater as someone who “eats like a pig”. In Spanish the animal of comparison is a bear, as in “comer como un oso”.
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02Nov
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“Gato escaldado del agua frìa huye” literally translates to “a scalded cat flees from cold water”. The equivalent phrase in English is “once bitten twice shy”.
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27Oct
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Here’s a phrase which has a similar counterpart in English: “cuando el gato no està los ratones bailan”. The translation is “when the cat’s away the mice dance”. In English the mice only get to play.
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26Oct
Categories: Anatomy, SPEAK Like A Spaniard... Comments: 0
When someone forces himself not to speak his mind, we say “to bite one’s tongue”. In Spanish the bite come in a different place. The Spanish phrase for Speaking one’s mind is “no morderse los labios”, which means “not to bite one’s lips”.
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25Oct
Categories: Anatomy, SPEAK Like A Spaniard... Comments: 0
In English, a bothersome person is called a “pain in the neck”. In Spanish, he’d be a “verruga”, which means “wart”.