I recently read a comment on a thread that mentioned a Turkish 'saying'. I remember thinking it was the same as the english one. So, with this in mind, perhaps members would like to share Turkish and/or english idioms/sayings. If you know of any common ones please share.

I will "start the ball rolling" :

to kick the bucket = to die

sorry to be so morbid

popped his clogs - to die (also)

hehe

down in the dumps - to be sad

whatever floats your boat - whatever interests you/works for you/makes you happy

Feeling blue = feeling sad

nalları dikmek (you say it when someone has died, like kicked the bucket)

Above board - to do something legally

You make my blood boil - You make me very angry
Save face - to protect ones reputation
cry over spilt milk - crying over nothing serious

haydan gelen huya gider = easy come easy go
it ürür kervan yürür = dogs bark, caravan goes
bir taşla iki kuş vurmak = to kill two birds with one stone

like....missionaries do whatever they can, but nothing changes..

" ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR --

"The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war. The proverb has been traced back to John Lyly's 'Euphues' (1578). First attested in the United States in 'Horse-Shoe Robinson' (1835). The proverb is found in varying forms. The proverb is frequently used to justify cheating."

From "Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings" by Gregory Y. Titelman ( Random House, N.Y., 1996)."

Unfortunately many have heard this and believe it. I think it is the root of a lot of problems.

The English language....British espcially is very special
and targeted.
If you do not know it's history or meaning ......say nothing.

If one does not get straight to the point it is known ad "going around the houses"

A picture is worth a thousand words

A picture can often get a message across much better than the best verbal description.

A pretty penny

mean the item is very expensive.

OK PT...How bout...

Barking up the wrong tree....
=
Looking in the wrong place

The lights are on but no ones home= A person is there in body but not in spirit or mind

Mad as a March hare


Someone who is excitable and unpredictable

Make a mountain out of a molehill


If somebody makes a mountain out of a molehill, they exaggerate the importance or seriousness of a problem.

Zip it

Telling someone to be quiet

wind your neck in

take a chill pill

both can mean calm down



off one's trolley - insane/crazy

To be like a dog with a bone

A happy hunting ground
=
A place one goes to make money...
Cat Stevens would be proud ...

She thinks she is blue-blooded.....
=
She thinks she is royalty...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjSHazjrWg

When something (like criticism, teasing, unkind words etc.) doesn´t affect the person it is aimed at, it is like "water dripping off a duck´s back".

I knew I´d already started a thread .

It would be great if anyone had examples of Turkish idioms.  Sometimes similar to English ones, sometimes not.

Turkish is an idiom-rich language. As an example I opened göz (eye) in my dictionary and here´s what I come up with:

gözü açık gitmek (lit. to pass away with his eyes open) = to die disappointed

göz gözü görmez (lit. your eyes cannot see the other´s eyes) = pitch dark

gözü yollarda kalmak (lit. his eyes remins on roads) = to have been waiting for a long time for someone/something

..-de gözü olmak (lit. to have an eye on something) = to desire something/somebody strongly

etc.

We have this in English too. (also to watch something/someone, for whatever reason eg warn someone "I´ve got my eye on you!" or "I´ll be keeping an eye on you!")

komşunun tavuğu komşuya kaz görünür (Neighbour´s chicken seems to the other neighbours as a goose) = Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence

It is not exactly the same I think.

If we say "Benim bu evde gözüm var", then it means you want this house, you want to buy/rent it. I think in this case you don´t say "I have an eye on this house", do you?

  An example:  If I came into a lot of money, I might say:

"Great! I´ve had my eye on a house in xxxx Avenue for ages, now I can buy it."

or

"I´ve got my eye on a dress in River Island and I´m going to buy it when I get paid."

To "have an eye on"  something may mean one is considering obtaining it or trying to obtain it.

"I´ve got my eye on a house in  x x x x , if the price drops/if the price is right, I may consider putting in an offer."

Si++  said:

"-de gözü olmak (lit. to have an eye on something) = to desire something/somebody strongly"

This is what I based my original comment on, but there was no context given.

Keep an eye on something = Göz kulak olmak (lit. be eyes and ears of it or have your eyes and ears on it)

OK but I have given 2 translations (literal one and the meaning in usage)

Thank you.    Please don´t think I was criticising you, I wasn´t.  I was showing dilliduduk where I got my inspiration from for my examples.

No problem

Barış Manço used Turkish idioms in his lyrics extensively.

As an example:

KAZMA

Selam büyükler merhaba çocuklar
Bu akşam size yeni bir öyküm var
Dilim sürçerse kusura bakmayın
Bir fincan kahvenin kırk yıl hatırı var

Diyeceğim o ki kişi yetinmeli
Yaşam dediin kısacık bir çizgi
Namus şeref onur hepsi güzel ama
En önemlisi helal alın teri

Komşunun tavuğu komşuya kaz görünür dersen
Kaz gelen yerden tavuğu esirgemezsen
Bu kafayla bir baltaya sap olamazsın ama
Gün gelir sapın ucuna olursun kazma

En güzel pilav Dimyat´ta pişer (refers to Dimyata pirince giderken evdeki bulgurdan olmak)
Yanında hoşaf pek güzel gider
Sen yan gelip yatar karnın guruldarken
Evdeki bulgur herkese yeter

Şam ipeğinden urba giysen bile
Zemzem suyuyla yıkansan bile
Dünya ahret bir keyif sürmek için
Mutlak dökmeli helal alın teri

Komşunun tavuğu komşuya kaz görünür dersen
Kaz gelen yerden tavuğu esirgemezsen
Bu kafayla bir baltaya sap olamazsın ama
Gün gelir sapın ucuna olursun kazma

İnsanın bir kez ters gitmesin işi
Muhallebi yerken kırılır dişi
Kazma olmaya özenmeyin dostlar
Alın teriyle kazanan en mutlu kişi

Komşunun tavuğu komşuya kaz görünür dersen
Kaz gelen yerden tavuğu esirgemezsen
Bu kafayla bir baltaya sap olamazsın ama
Gün gelir sapın ucuna olursun kazma

***

Dilim sürçerse kusura bakma = Don´t make fun of my pronounciation if I make a mistake

Bir fincan kahvenin kırk yıl hatırı vardır = A cup coffee starts the friendship of 40 years

Komşunun tavuğu komşuya kaz görünür = One´s hen seems like a goose to the other

Kaz gelecek yerden tavuk esirgenmez = You can give a hen if you will get a goose in return

Bir baltaya sap olmak = to be a handle of an axe (to be something useful)

Dimyata pirince giderken evdeki bulgurdan olmak = To lose the bulgur at hand when you go to Dimyat to get some rice (One should find sufficient what he already has at his hands)

Şam ipeğinden urba giymek = To wear garments made of Damascus silk (To look as if to be someone important)

Zemzem suyuyla yıkanmak = To wash yourself with zemzem water (Zemzem water is considered religiously important)

zemzem suyuyla yıkanmak (purifying oneself with zamzam water) purifying from sins/becoming sinless and perfect.

to the best of my knowledge

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Turkish_proverbs

These are a large list proverbs with literal and meaning translations.. but many of them are similar to what has been posted.. thought they were very interesting!

Sütten ağzı yanan yoğurdu üfleyerek yer = once bitten twice shy (From translation section)

Here are some idioms:

el elin eşeğini türkü söyleyerek çağırırmış : no one really helps you when you need a favor

keser döner sap döner gün olur hesap döner : someday everything would change(not really used in everyday language)

ainesi iştir kişinin lafa bakılmaz görünür şahsın rütbei akli eserinden : words are not important what is important is the things you do (not really used in everyday language)

aşağı tükürsen sakal yukarı tükürsen bıyık : it´s used when someone is in a bad situation and cannot escape

iki ucu boklu değnek : same as above

iti an çomağı hazırla : when you talk about someone that you do not like and when he comes out of nowhere, this is what you say.

soğuk rüzgarlar esmek : when someone has a debate with someone else this is what is said

gün doğmadan neler doğar : you can expect good things happen in the future

vakit nakittir : time is important

etc...

English versions for these 2;

aşağı tükürsen sakal yukarı tükürsen bıyık : it´s used when someone is in a bad situation and cannot escape - up the creek without a paddle

N.B.  I haven´t translated the Turkish, only interpreted what has been written in English .

This reminded me of a similar one:

Mutton dressed as lamb - this comment may be made when a person sees an older woman trying (and failing) to look younger by wearing clothes/hairstyles/accessories meant for a much younger woman.

maybe with a dudu on her arm?

Acting or looking like Lady Muck.   Pretending to be of a higher social standing than she is.  Also swanning around can have a similar reference.

On people who are not so bright, Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Getting things wrong: Throwing the baby out this the bath water.  Making a pig´s ear of it. 

Getting agitated: In a right two and eight!  Getting your knickers in a twist. 

Throwing the baby out WITH the bath water.

The term "nallari dikmek" is not one you would normally use, if you are describing your own father´s demise.

It carries a high degree of disrespect for the deceased...and is very impolite, if used with reference to human being who has passed away..

You´re quite right AlphaF - we would not say ´kick the bucket´ if we were being respectful and serious. Only if the death was being taken very lightly - or if we were talking maybe about ourselves , eg If I haven´t kicked the bucket before then.

I have another, similar one, but it´s a tad rude.  "All fur coat and no knickers."  

I have a book (somewhere) and it details the history behind idioms.  Some go back hundreds of years.  One theory about the above idiom is that it refers to someone who has committed suicide by hanging themselves - They would stand on a bucket and kick it from under theselves at the final moment. Gruesome

I used to work in the banking industry and I always remember my boss referring to people who were in a bad way financially as being in "Dickie´s meadow" i.e. big trouble (doesn´t have to be restricted to financial trouble).

From time to time my dear mother uses this idiom :  "All my eye and Peggy Martin"

I´ve looked it up here.

Dear All, 

Let me introduce to you WikIdioms (http://www.wikidioms.com) - a crowd-source project of multilingual translation of idioms, phrasal verbs, expressions and other kinds of collocations. 

The site contains now circa two thousand expressions in several languages and is rapidly growing due to the efforts of our fellow translators. 

I invite you to visit the site and use it for your needs, or even contribute! 

Regards, Anna

I just thought of another idiom:

 a cuckoo in the nest

peacetrain , what do you want to say me by using this idiom as reply?

As you had only posted twice and each post was the same, I made an assumption that you aren´t here for the same reasons as most other people .  It happens sometimes.

Having googled your post, it seems you´ve been posting it on other sites too and, according to my web browser security, wikidioms doesn´t appear to be a secure site.  I thought at first that it may be a Wiki subsidiary, but I don´t think it is.

If I´m wrong then I apologise .

 Also on those "not so bright people" - I also use...

- Not the sharpest tool in the shed

- Not the brightest color in the crayon box

- Light´s are on, but no one is home

- Wheel is spinning, but the hamster died

- A few cards short of a full deck

- A few fries short of a Happy Meal

..... ok, maybe I use too many of these, too often (sorry, lots of dim people around here..)  Just tought  I´d share....

 - oops...BTW, speaking of dim - please excuse my typo´s!

useless = "as much use as a chocolate teapot"

Your references to the financial markets reminded me of some other ones:

Because we can never tell how well a business is doing - You don´t know who´s skinnydipping until the tide goes out!

About the banks: The sort of people who lend you an umbrella then ask for it back when it starts to rain.

Don´t forget ´a sandwich short of a picnic´

OOOPS-sorry-this was mentioned earlier on !!

someone who´s shy-wouldn´t say boo to a goose.

someone who´s talkative-can talk the hind leg off a donkey.

someone who´s big-headed-is too big for his boots.

someone not very strong-couldn´t knock the skin off a rice pudding.

Bir kulaktan giren diğerinden çıkmak - go in one ear and out the other

  wearing very formal or decorative clothes in a way that attracts attention

well that´s how I always understood it but, having looked at some other references, some use it for the opposite meaning . . . "to look a mess" or

"to make a dog´s dinner of something" = to make a mess of something.

Quoting peacetrain

 to kick the bucket = to die sorry to be so morbid

Tahtalı köye gitmek = To go to the wood village (i.e to die)

"Tahtalı köy" (wood village or village with woods) here means graveyard

küplere binmek

ibreyi 200´e vurdurmak  xD

ağırdan almak

dokuz doğurmak

ayh bu ingilizce idiomlar delirtecek beni...

Herkes ektiğini biçer = You reap what you sow

Turkish equivalent: pireyi deve yapmak (to make a camel out of a flea)

Ah, like the Dutch version of "to turn a mosquito into an elephant"

I want to share something I learned today

I realized while talking to a friend that "samanlıkta iğne aramak" (lit. to look for a needle in a hay barn) idiom exists in German as well (die Nadel im Heuhaufen suchen). 

I was just googling it and realized this time that it also exists in English, just the word hay barn is changed with haystack.

funny to see how so distant languages can share idiomatic expressions...

samanlıkta iğne aramak = to find a needle in a haystack = die Nadel im Heuhaufen suchen

This idiom also exists in Polish: "Szukać igły w stogu siana". (szukać = aramak, igły = kind-of iğneyi because iğne = igła, w stogu siana = samanlıkta).

Some other similarities between Polish and Turkish which come to my mind now:

1. Proverb "İt ürür, kervan yürür" - "Psy szczekają, karawana jedzie dalej".

2. Verb "çıkmak", in the meaning of "to leave some room/place, to go out from it" has its Polish counterpart in verb "wyjść". I was surprised to see that in Turkish "çıkmak" can be used when describing how somebody looks in the picture (like in "bu fotoğrafda çok güzel çıkmışsın"), because "our" verb "wyjść" can be also used in at least very similar way ("bardzo dobrze wyszedłeś na tym zdjęciu").

Maybe they are contagious

Here is another one:

Armut dibine düşer - the apple doesn´t fall far from the tree

The only difference is: pear / apple

Son noktayı koymak = To put the last dot

A Turkish saying I like because it is so visual is;

"Aşağı tükürsen sakal, yükari türkürsen biyik"

If you spit downwards it hits the beard, upwards the moustache.

The meaning is that in some situations no matter which way you go

there is no good alternative.

(apart from not spitting at all, sorry couldn´t resist)

If you spit downwards it hits the beard, upwards the moustache.

Is it something used in English? We are trying to find those with close meanings in both English and Turkish.

2 expressions we would use in English are ´caught between the devil and the deep blue sea´ and ´caught between a rock and a hard place´.

 Also "In a catch 22 situation" - comes from the book titled Catch 22

or "Hobson´s choice" from the play, where Hobson had to choose between all the town knowing he was a drunk, and letting his daughter marry the man she wanted to (he disapproved)

Catch 22 is one of the best novels I read. I laughed a lot while I was reading it.

Başkasının işine burnunu sokmak = to poke one´s nose to others´ business

Bir şeye Fransız kalmak = lit. stay as a French to something (meaning to not understand something)

Is there any equivalent saying in English with the word ´French´ involved?

Yesterday our PM used this saying on a question by a French member of PACE.

Is she a French  (who asked this question)?

confirmation comes and he continues...

"Kusura bakmayın ama siz Türkiye´ye Fransız kalmışsınız." = "Excuse me but you stay French to Turkey." (You don´t understand the matters of Turkey but you talk as if you do.)

Muriel Marland-Militello (L) said her Armenian-Turkish family was saved in 1915 by their Muslim neighbors, who helped them escape from Turkey by boat.

The European parliamentarian the Turkish prime minister accused of being “foreign” to Turkey is actually of Armenian-Turkish origin and her mother is from Istanbul, the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review learned Thursday.

French parliamentarian Muriel Marland-Militello drew a sharp response from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan when she asked him a question about the protection of minorities in Turkey during his appearance before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE, in Strasbourg.

Erdoğan said he would like to invite Marland-Militello to visit Turkey, since she had perhaps not been closely following developments in the country and was speaking based on hearsay.

“In Turkish, when somebody does not know something or speaks out of context, it is said that they are from France. Mrs. Marland-Militello is clearly from France,” Erdoğan said.

“The prime minister did not know my family was from Kadıköy, Istanbul. My mother was born in Turkey. She was an Orthodox Christian,” Marland-Militello told the Daily News in a telephone interview Thursday.

“I just think his answer to me was not a correct one. He just said I was French and I know that expression and what it means in Turkish. I know that it was not very nice expression,” she said. “The prime minister did not know my mother and my grandfather were both from Kadıköy.”

Source: here

Sudan çıkmış balık = fish out of water

If you are placed in a situation that is completely new to you and confuses you, you are like "sudan çıkmış balık".

"Geçti Bor´un pazarı, sür eşeğini Niğde´ye"

Literally it means "Bor´s (a small district of Niğde) market/bazaar is over, drive your donkey to Niğde (a province)" and it is used when it is too late for something. I also find this expression funny, it is mostly used to make fun of someone.

I was wondering if there is a similar expression in English. One can say "too little too late" but actually we don´t talk about being little in this case, but only being way too late

How about the English expression "taking your own sweet time" . Its when someone seems to be procrastinating when they are expected to be somewhere.

My favourite is

         Aşağı tükürsem sakal, yukarı tükürsem bıyık

´If I split down, beard, if I split up, moustache.´ It´s used about a no-win situation. Maybe my thinking is too visual, but it always makes me smile.

---------------------

Oh, I´m sorry. I just noticed there was a post about it already.

One English expression is ´missed the boat´ if it´s a missed opportunity. ´I/you/he/we missed the boat´ but its not really used to make fun of someone.

Yılanın başını küçükken ezeceksin - Kill it before it grows

Is there such a saying in English?

 "To nip something in the bud" ... like the Turkish it implies that the thing you are stopping is a negative, unwanted thing.

Here´s another similar saying:

Son gülen iyi güler = He who laughs last laughs best

Sert kayaya çarpmak - to hit a hard rock

 Another similar pair:

To shut the stable door after the horse has bolted

At alını çoktan Üsküdar´ı geçmiş

 we say, "to hit a brick wall"

guess our saying was invented by a city-dweller, the Turkish by a villager

Another similar one:

Ateş olmayan yerden duman çıkmaz - Where there´s smoke, there´s fire.

Bir musibet bin nasihatten iyidir.

One accident, punishment, disease is more effective than a thousand words.

İki ucu pis değnek.
There is a dirty stick in both sizes you have to hold, in any case you get dirt in your hands!

I don´t know if it is a saying in English but once I had read:

It´s like locking the door after the horse are gone. (speaking of counter-measures taken after a robbery)

Taşı sıkıp suyunu çıkarmak = Squeeze a stone and get its juice

Similar in English

Squeeze blood from (or out of) a stone