Idiom is great, isn’t it? The kind of collection of words that don’t translate directly into anything meaningful in another language.
There are loads of examples of course. One of my favourites is ‘off by heart’, as in ‘I learnt it off by heart’. Strange that we would choose to say that rather than off by head, brain or memory!
Apparently, those ancient Greeks felt the heart was the home of intelligence. Odd, then, that this phrase seems to have survived a translation into another language, completely discrediting my definition…
Paul Dilger's blog 
My GCSE English teacher, who was of Turkish descent, used to give us TONS of idioms from Turkish that didn’t always translate well. For fun, like.
My favourite was the Turkish for “I’m knackered”, which translated literally meant “My legs are running with black water”!
HOURS of fun!!
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Nice one Andy. Yes, hours of fun to be had with idioms in a ton of different languages. Great cure for insomnia :-).
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