Thursday, April 20, 2017

German sayings

In my last blog post (March 20th), I promised to give you some more English / German proverbs, so here we go:

This is one of my favorite sayings: "Alles in Butter." Literally translated, it means "Everything is in butter" (sounds strange, doesn't it?) and what a German wants to say with this expression is quite simple: Everything is hunky-dory (another great expression!). Or: "Everything is well." It could also mean "All problems are solved" ...

But why butter? Because we Germans eat a lot of butter? Because margarine was used in the past as a cheap substitute? Personally, I love butter, so I think it's a very apt saying. :-)

I've searched for the origin in the Internet and found that it goes back to the medieval ages. Apparently, they tried to transport fragile glasses across the Alps, and many of them broke during transport. So they came up with the idea to fill them with liquid butter. Once it had hardened, the glasses were a lot more resistant to pressure.
Isn't the history of language a fascinating thing?

Maybe you have some more sayings that express the same feeling of having "everything in butter"? If yes, please share them with me!

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Beate
www.happybooks.de
Mischief & Humor from Page 1

3 comments:

  1. Hi Beate,
    Yes, the history of language is so interesting. For my newest novel, Oh Danny Boy, I've learned a lot about Irish sayings. "Brilliant, just brilliant," an Irish saying, also could mean "Everything is in butter."

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  2. That's a nice one, Josie! Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment!

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  3. Language is indeed fascinating. The origin of the expression, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water" is a funny one to me. The poor baby was the last to be bathed in what was probably not very clean water. Uck!

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