Life

[Bjorn]

French Canadians don't say "you're pulling my leg", they say "you're singing an apple through my nose."

 

That's beautifully nonsensical!

[I_smell]

Russians call fruit seeds "bones".

 

"Where is apple? Did you remove his bones??"

[Hermie]

Oh, my Brazilian girlfriend is full of these. 

 

"He woke up with the monkey!"

 

Me: "I'm lazy too." Her: "Yeah, but you're not slimeface like I am." "...What?!" "Ehm... woodface?" "..."

 

 

I also had a Polish co-worker who taught me the greatest variant of something not being his problem:

 

"Not my monkey, not my circus."

[Roderick]

"He woke up with the monkey, but it's not my circus."

 

Am I doing it right?

[dibs]

German friend came into the office one day and said "I must have eaten a clown", meaning he was being very funny that day.

[Roderick]

You are fucking making that up.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I like the idea that being a cannibal would make them act a bit funny.

[JonCole]

I feel like there needs to be a wiki full of these regional idioms. There probably already is one, right? That's how the internet works?

[SecretAsianMan]

The Urban Thesaurus maybe, as shitty as that place can be sometimes.

[dibs]

You are fucking making that up.

 

I'm not, he was sorta famous amongst us for his sayings

"You don't sweat much for a woman your size"

"You are getting fat"

[Twig]

Hah, I had a German friend at DigiPen who had no problem talking about how fat Americans were even as he sat right next to the fattest man I've ever personally met (he is obscenely overweight, like at least 350 pounds and probably about six feet). He didn't even consider that it might be hurtful. He was just being blunt. It often came up when we'd go out to eat and the portions would be way larger than he expected or wanted.

[I_smell]

I moved from England to NL and nobody here is overweight. It's unbelievable to go back and remember what a fat person looks like, and how common they are.

[dibs]

God how could i forget.

 

In reference to the vibrator he had gotten for our uni colleague for her 30th birthday:

"I don't understand the problem, its very practical - 4 speeds, 12 functions".

 

And once we had convinced him it wasn't appropriate:

"Fine, i'll give it to my sister, it's her birthday next month".

 

In fairness, sending two Germans and a poor innocent Indonesian to choose a present was probably going to be a bad idea.

[Roderick]

Surely what he actually said was... "I doont underztant zee problem, eet eez very praktikal: vier shpeeds, zwelve Einheitsfunctionen."

 

I_Smell, you try to get fat when you only have tulip bulbs to eat! So insensitive.

[I_smell]

Aaaaa I have a guy in my office who's latvian, he's exactly the same.

 

Brings in a bottle of whiskey and is upset that nobody's joining in. Goes out to buy lunch and gets 5 buckets of ice-cream when we do not have a freezer.

Constantly pushing references to drugs and sex in the game, gets told off for referring to female employees as booth babes, etc.

 

I'm not gonna tie that to any specific race, I'm actually pretty relieved to hear that these people exist in other countries.

Keeps the office fun!

[Roderick]

Isn't that... your office? He must be damn good at whatever he does. Especially if he's VP of I Can't Even.

[dibs]

Surely what he actually said was... "I doont underztant zee problem, eet eez very praktikal: vier shpeeds, zwelve Einheitsfunctionen."

 

I_Smell, you try to get fat when you only have tulip bulbs to eat! So insensitive.

 

I puzt zem tuplips on zem stroopvaffl.

[SecretAsianMan]

I don't like where my head is at these days.  Between stress at home and stress at work, I'm finding that I'm becoming irrationally angry at everything, which is in turn leading me to be argumentative over little things, which is in turn leading me to create disagreements in my mind when in fact none exist.  I'm finding myself saying and thinking things that I don't actually believe just for the sake of arguing about them because I'm mad.  It's only afterwards that I think "What the fuck am I talking about?  I don't actually think these things!" and I realize I'm just looking to pick fights even with people who agree with me.  Being aware of it doesn't seem to be much help either.

 

I'm going to take this moment of lucidity to apologize in advance if I say something in the next few days/weeks that is unnecessarily belligerent or offensive.  I really don't mean it, I swear I'm actually a nice guy.

[osmosisch]

You are fucking making that up.

Nah, that's a common German thing. My colleagues did it too.

In Dutch, when you're pulling someone's leg you it's either called 'pinning something on their sleeve' or 'leading them around the garden'. When you want to get something done you say 'let's take the cow by the horns.' If you're being very nitpicky, you are 'looking for nails on low water' (the carpentry kind of nails) or 'sieving mosquitoes'.

[Bjorn]

"Not my monkey, not my circus."

 

This is my new favorite thing, followed by all the other things in this thread.

 

 

I'm going to take this moment of lucidity to apologize in advance if I say something in the next few days/weeks that is unnecessarily belligerent or offensive.  I really don't mean it, I swear I'm actually a nice guy.

 

Dude, I hope things get better soon. 

[Merus]

'Fair dinkum' is honest, both in speech and when referring to work done (less common: 'dinky di'); when objecting to being misled, you protest 'don't come the raw prawn (with me)'; someone who is acting irrationally has kangaroos in the top paddock, among many colourful idioms essentially meaning that there's a piece missing from the whole - beer short of a six-pack, a chop short of a barbie. etc, creativity is encouraged; 'you've got Buckley's' means 'no chance', occasionally expressed as 'you've got two chances: none and Buckley's'; 'Woop Woop' is a very remote town, and 'out the back of Woop Woop' even more remote; if you freeze, or confused, you're 'like a stunned mullet'; to do dirty, hard work is 'to do hard yakka'.

 

We also have many expressions for saying someone is stupid, but then doesn't everyone. My favourites are 'couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel' and 'couldn't find a grand piano in a one-room house'.

[osmosisch]

If you're being very nitpicky, you are 'looking for nails on low water' (the carpentry kind of nails) or 'sieving mosquitoes'.

Oh, or 'fucking ants' (forgot the best one).

[Ucantalas]

Ugh. $8.25 and 3 hours later, and my clothes are not dry.

3 different machines. Not one of them working. So now here I sit, clothes on a rack, typing with one hand while the other holds my sister's hair dryer, trying to get them into a wearable state.

This has upset me more than i think it should.

[Roderick]

Dann hast du gar keinen Clown gefrühstuckt!

[SecretAsianMan]

In contrast to my last few posts, I finally got a bit of good news.  One of the more significant issues with my project seems to have been mostly resolved.  It doesn't fix everything and there's still a ton of work to be done, but even this small degree of forward progress has done wonders for my morale.