Are you looking for idioms, slang, shibboleths, or just anything? I love this question, but it is almost to broad for me to even begin to answer.
'Your guess is as good as mine.'
Holy shit, people don't say that everywhere?
Look at you with your fancy words, bet you even know grammer...I was introduced to OP's line of thought when some ESL folks explained to me why English was such a "stupid" language and "so hard to learn." I did some reading into it and apparently you can express much more complex thoughts in the english language but it takes way more words. Like, way more.
Anything that comes to mind, really. There's gold in them there vocalizations.
Heard the 'guess' one in something I was watching and it just inspired me to ask. The German equivalent would be "Ich habe genau so wenig Ahnung wie Du." Means about the same but lacks the original's elegance.
There's so many extremely funny and thoughtful expressions in American English, they almost deserve their own sub.
You should make a sub about it. It is something I would try to contribute to on the regular.
Here are a few regional Shibboleths from the Philadelphia/South Jersey area that I always liked. Some of these are pretty old, and not in common parlance anymore
- "Going down the shore" - Self explanatory, but most Americans would say they are "Going to the beach"
- "How you making out?" - Equivalent to "How are you doing", but again, mostly said in South Philly
- "Getting all jammed up" - Getting upset, or emotional
- "Jit-bag" - Old-school Philly insult, means a used condom
- "Crumb" or "Crumb-bum" - used to be a classic Philly insult. Video (youtube.com) of the former mayor Frank Rizzo getting into it with a reporter and call him a 'Crumb"
- "It started getting dark early around there" - Black people moved in
Some of these are very obscure to me. Love them, thank you.
Sorry for the late reply, had to think a little and real life got in the way.
In the end, I decided to create that new sub. Working title is "languagegems", haven't pulled the trigger yet, though. What's another badly maintained special interest sub anyway?
Was looking for something that's easily found when typing into the search box but also not limited to any particular language and type of phrase or expression.
Your thoughts?
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