“Traer por la calle de la amargura” literally translates to “to drag through the street of bitterness”. The equivalent phrase in English is “to give someone a hard time”.
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30Jun
Categories: SPEAK Like A Spaniard... Comments: 0
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15Jun
Categories: SPEAK Like A Spaniard... Comments: 0
“La ociosidad es la madre de todos los vicios” means “idleness is the mother of all the vices”. The equivalent in English is “idleness is the root of all evil”.
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13Jun
Categories: SPEAK Like A Spaniard... Comments: 0
When we try not to cry, we say “to choke back one’s tears” or “to hold back one’s tears”. In Spanish, one “drinks one’s tears”, as in “beberse las lágrimas”.
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12Jun
Categories: Food, SPEAK Like A Spaniard... Comments: 0
Here’s an idiom that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but which is obviously built on the rhyming scheme: “no hay miel sin hiel”. The literal translation is “there is no honey without bile”. The equivalent phrase in English is “no rose without a thorn”.
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11Jun
Categories: Fruit, SPEAK Like A Spaniard... Comments: 0
In English we describe something really dry as “dry as a bone”. The Spanish equivalent is “mas seco que un higo”, which means “drier than a fig”.
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10Jun
Categories: Metals/Minerals, SPEAK Like A Spaniard... Comments: 0
Here’s a saying that has a similar counterpart in English: “quien a hierro mata a hierro muere”. The literal translation is “he who kills by iron dies by iron”. The equivalent in English is “he who live by the sword dies by the sword”.
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09Jun
Categories: SPEAK Like A Spaniard..., Vegetable Comments: 0
When we find ourselves in a predicament we might use the idiom “to get into a fine pickle”. A Spanish equivalent involves another vegetable: “meterse en un berenjal”, which means “to get into an eggplant patch”.
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08Jun
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When we have a difficult problem to solve we might use the idiom “to be a hard nut to crack”. A Spanish equivalent is “ser duro de pelar”, which means “to be hard to peel”.
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06Jun
Categories: Numbers, SPEAK Like A Spaniard... Comments: 0
In English, when we want to give someone a piece of our mind, we say we’re going “to tell someone a thing or two”. In Spanish the right number is four, as in “decirlo a uno cuatro cosas”.
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05Jun
Categories: Anatomy, SPEAK Like A Spaniard... Comments: 0
In English, the only “liver” related idiom I can think of is “lily-livered”, which means “cowardly”. Spanish has numerous idioms employing “hígados” or “higadillos”, which means “livers”. One of them is “comerse los higadillos”, which means “to eat each other’s livers”. The idiomatic translation is “to tear each other to pieces”.