It’s strange how we have some of the same ideas, all around the world.
‘Out of the frying pan...’ in Indonesian becomes ‘out of the tiger’s mouth, and into the crocodile’s’. (Shutterstock)
There are differences in how we frame them, of course. That’s what makes things interesting. Here are some of my favourite English idioms, not merely because they are insightful, but because their parallels around the world are so varied and unexpected.
First, we have that good old chestnut: a leopard cannot change its spots. In German, it’s “you cannot turn a farm horse into a racehorse” (a bit harsh, but true). In Kyrgyzstan, there’s a wild twist: no matter how well you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest. In Russian, we find perhaps the unkindest variant of all: only the grave will cure the hunchback. (It’s hard to imagine people muttering this in passing, while nodding their heads at someone else’s glaring flaws!)
Local landscape, climate and fauna play key roles in various versions of “out of the frying pan and into the fire”. In Czech, it is “out of the mud, into the puddle”. In Hindi, “aasmaan se gire, khajoor mein atke” (from the skies into the date tree; so, saved from crashing, but stuck amid prickles). The Indonesian version draws a vivid picture: “out of the tiger’s mouth, and into the crocodile’s,” they say.
Well, what’s done is done. Or, to use a phrase that often annoys me, it’s not use crying over spilt milk. In Hungarian, it isn’t milk but water: to put on one’s coat on after the rain. And in Indonesian: the rice has become porridge.
Not all problems can simply be waved away, though. What if one is stuck “between the devil and the deep blue sea”? In Malay, the phrase is graphic: swallow it, your mother will die; throw it up and your father will die. In Russian, it is to be “between the hammer and the anvil”. The Portuguese perhaps put it most bluntly: “run and the animal will catch you, stay and it will eat you”.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I love a sinister turn of phrase. English, which tends to weave humour into its adages, doesn’t often do the Edgar Allen Poe variety of quiet horror.
But there are other languages that do. Where we say “don’t judge a book by its cover” or “clothes don’t make the man”, meaning that one shouldn’t be fooled by smooth outward appearances, the Dutch make the perils far clearer: “It isn’t only cooks that carry long knives,” they say.
How’s that for an unexpected jump scare?
(Adam Jacot de Boinod is author of The Meaning of Tingo. The views expressed are personal)
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