Cool sayings from around the world (part 5)

During my travels around the world, I've discovered several interesting expressions from backpackers of various nationalities. One of my favourites is a Chinese saying involving strawberry blancmange, an industrial strength vacuum cleaner, and a Peter Stringfellow mask, but that's one that should probably go unmentioned.

However, most sayings from around the world can definitely be mentioned, and I've collected five of my favourites below for your international expressional pleasure.

1) "Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week."

This cat's going to be really busy tomorrow.
He'll probably have to drink twice as much milk!

At first glance, I assumed this Spanish saying was an amusing way of saying that they procrastinate a lot in Spain.

However, apparently it's not intended to encourage laziness, and it's actually intended to do the opposite. It's basically a way of saying, "Do it now! Get stuff done today! Otherwise if you keep putting things off you'll just be twice as busy tomorrow."

On a related note, three weeks ago it was National Procrastination Day. Time to celebrate!

Cool sayings from around the world (part 4)

It's been a couple of years since I last featured cool sayings from around the world on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog, so let's make up for lost time with another round-up of amusing sayings used in various parts of the world. There are also a couple of wise proverbs thrown in there too.

1) "It's a carrot!"

A carrot.
Actually, I probably didn't need to point that out. It was obvious.
Or to put it another way ... it's a carrot!

A cool Korean saying which I like is, "It's a carrot!" which means, "That's obvious!" or "Of course!"

For example if a friend asked me if I was going to watch the football tomorrow, I might reply, "It's a carrot!" If I said that in English, people would think I'd gone mad, but if you said it in Korea they would know you meant, "Of course I'm going to watch the football!"

Apparently, the reason this saying developed is because the hangul* for 'It's a carrot' are quite similar to the hangul for 'Of course', so it started to be used as kind of a joke between friends.

* Korean alphabet characters.

10 cool Japanese words and expressions (part 2)

As I've pointed out several times before on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog, I'm a big fan of the Swedish language, but another language I think is pretty cool is Japanese.

As the 2020 Summer Olympics were originally scheduled to take place in Japan next week, that's therefore as good an excuse as any to feature anopther round-up of some of my favourite Japanese words and expressions.

"Bah! I'm too early! He's a not yet dead person."

1) Not yet...

One Japenese word which I find amusing is the word for 'widow'. The kanji symbols for widow literally translate as 'not yet dead person'.

I suppose that technically it's true, but I still can't help thinking it's an unusual way to describe a widow!

Wise and silly African proverbs

From time to time on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog I like to feature cool sayings from around the world, so on that theme, this week's blog post features a collection of African proverbs.

Some of the following African proverbs are very wise and meaningful, while others aren't quite so wise, and are just a bit silly. But which are silly, and which are wise? I'll let you decide...

Editor's note: For the benefit of stupid people, this is
not the actual sun. Merely an artistic representation.

1) "The same sun that melts the wax, also hardens the clay."

This is a clever way of saying that people react differently to similar circumstances. One person might use a difficult challenge to spur them on and achieve greatness. Another person might react to the same challenge negatively and use it as an excuse for failure.

I really like this African proverb and can imagine it being used in motivational talks, so you can probably guess which category I would place this proverb into. But what do you think?

Silly or wise?