all the odd, colorful, fresh and otherwise delightful ways in which non-native English speakers enrich our beloved tongue.As a purely personal thing, I love translating quirky Spanish expressions literally into English and seeing the reactions of those around me. I confess I do it mostly for a laugh, but at the back of my mind there is, I suspect, a subconscious, stubborn desire to expose British people to more* unconventional ways of using English. Most of the time my "foreignerspeak" gets ignored, and probably put down to a genuine mistake. But sometimes people do get curious and want to find out why I am saying that and what it means, and they take pains to give me the equivalent expression in English. I love that because it gets me talking about words and language with people...
Some of my personal favourites:
"The shrimp that falls asleep gets carried away by the stream"
"You lie more than you speak"
"Never say 'This water I shall not drink' nor 'This priest is not my father'" (sorry, Father Steve!
)
"He who stands under great tree gets covered in ants"
"If you don't want soup you get three bowls"
...and some more I can't remember...
* The "unconventional" ways of speaking English are myriad here -as elsewhere, I bet-, and depend on many factors such as class, ethnic origin, geographical location etc. I am just contributing my bit to this Babel...
