cuir síoda ar ghabhar; is gabhar fós é
I guess we use “Making gold from straw” (German).
Isn’t there literally a German fairy tale about someone able to make straw into gold?
Yes, that’s where it’s from.
You can’t pick a naked man’s pocket.
That’s nature’s pocket.
The prison wallet
“Make sure he doesn’t pick your pocket!”
Challenge accepted.
it should just be deleted
Probably the closest in Irish is “is deacair olann a bhaint de ghabhar” (it’s hard to get wool from a goat)
Depends where you live I guess. Mohair and cashmere come from goats.
You can’t paint the Mona Lisa with crayons.
Kind of related to yours, “You’re putting lipstick on a pig”
Can’t demand with a laddle if you are offered a spoonful
“You can’t get blood from a stone” is classic in the US. “No more juice from the squeeze” is another variant.
How is that even similar?
How is it not? The euphemisms all mean you “cant get X from Y.”
Both of my examples mean exactly that.
“You can’t make a silk purse from sows ear” means you can’t make something nice from rubbish. “You can’t get blood from a stone” means attempting something difficult, if not impossible and futile”. E.g. “trying to get my kids to tell me about their school day is like trying to get blood from a stone.” It doesn’t matter how hard I try I get nothing.
A sow is a female pig, which doesnt produce silk at all. Attempting to get silk from it would be difficult, if not impossible and futile. It wouldn’t matter how hard you try, you would get nothing.
You can get as much silk from a sows ear as you can get blood from a stone. I dont see much differnce, but i guess the sows ear phrase requires more culture context if it means “you can’t get something nice from rubbish.”
One of the versions I have heard about this analogy comes from corn silk. The corn fed to pigs is usually of the lowest quality, and if you use the silk from cheap ears of corn, you won’t be able to make a useful purse out of it
Polish - „you can’t make a whip out of shit” „z gówna bicza nie ukręcisz”
I can sure as hell try
I imagine it wouldn’t hurt as much as a whip, but probably equally intimidating.
I think this takes home the prize for weirdest.
I like this one
You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit
You can make cattle feed out of it though.
“You can’t expect pears out of an elm tree” or “No le pidas peras al olmo”
German for “like father, like son” is “the apple doesn’t fall far off the tree trunk”. But many people nowadays use “the apple doesn’t fall far off the pear tree”, which is a variant that I think originally was supposed to suggest illegitimate fatherhood.
The above poster isnt really correct. We have an actual saying that is the literal translation: "Der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm ". And it means exactly what you suggest, a child being very much like one of their parents in one way or another.
Like father, like son exists as well, “Wie der Vater so der Sohn”.
You’re right, I forgot about the fact that there’s a literal translation. But besides being gender-neutral, both sayings mean the same, no?
My main point was that many Germans now regularly use the pear-tree malapropism, however.
Lmao your username 😭
Isn’t that more like “you can’t ask an elm tree for pears?”
And even more literally “don’t ask for pears to the elm?”
You can put your boots in the oven, but that don’t make 'em biscuits
You can hope in one hand and shit in the other, see which one fills up first.
Oh my god, I did not expect to be hit with the wisdom stick THAT hard
Don’t worry it missed you.
Ayyylmao jk love you.
That is actually pretty funny.
It’s incredibly fun to drop on people when they innocently 'I hope blah blah blah.
Dare I ask which country speaks words that cannot be truer.
Edit: saw your instance…
That’s right. It’s from New Zealand.
In sweden there is the same but with spit in one hand, wish in the other.
Sorry, sir, I like shit.
In the US there’s the saying “you can’t squeeze water from a stone”
I always heard it as blood from a stone, but yeah.
