Do other languages have things like rhyming slang or silly phrases

[mrsbeeton999]

As well as rhyming slang I’m also wondering if other languages have phrases like Bob’s your uncle

Of course they do!

Yes
My favourites include:
That sounds like a spanner on a pig.
Partying like a farmer with toothache.
I'll keep it in the holes.

I'll leave you to guess the meanings.

Definitely weird saying's. I'd be surprised if there's only one language with rhyming slang of some sort.

Ridiculous to think the English language is the only one to have slang or silly phrases. Can I assume you're English op?

Absolutely of course they do.

I have friends and relatives married to/living with Dutch, French, Belgian, Italian, Chinese & Lebanese partners.

When I was doing my nurse training & then my second degree (in English funnily enough) I had fellow students who were Mauritian, Cambodian, Indian, Japanese, Dutch, French, Ghanaian, Mexican, South African...

Some of the most entertaining conversations came about as a result of odd British phrases coming up, the non British born people going like

what the hell did you just say?

Or less often the Brits saying that if one of the non Brits said a phrase particularly to their country in English (usually they'd say them in their original language under their breath so we'd just let em crack on)

The hard bit is explaining them cos the vast majority are at best archaic and at worst never made any bloody sense in the first place (Shakespeare has a lot to answer for, for starters!)

Many times you realise you use a phrase without really understanding it.

The main one that sticks in my mind is non Brit nurses looking for the "craic" the Irish nurses were often asking after "where's the craic?" "U don't know there's a crack? In the floor the ceiling?"

Similar issues with literal attempts at translating stuff too.

The one I really felt for was the Ghanaian chap who ended up with a girl from Aberdeen and she forgot to prepare him before a trip to meet her parents about Doric. They were both knackered when they got back her from constantly translating and him from working so hard to understand what everyone was saying. Her family were very welcoming and spoke "proper English" when speaking to him directly but it was the constant chatter around him that he couldn't understand that wore him out.

One friend of mine is bilingual but living in a 3rd country and working in a 4th, she says that's exhausting too! I'm not surprised. But mainly she finds she has to be so careful as there's a few words in country 3's language that sound very like very offensive words in country 4's language - I'm knackered just thinking about that!!

Idioms occur in every culture and in every language.

My father was from a Spanish-speaking country and he wouldn't just say Spanish idioms and odd expressions in Spanish but he would say them to me with a literal English translation. The man sometimes didn't make sense.

I remember his favorite idioms/ expressions were:

No hay pedo.
It literally means, "there's no fart". It actually means "there's no problem"

No tiene pelos en la lengua.
Literallly, "the person has no hair on his tongue". It means "that person says what they think with no filter"

Se cree la muy muy.
Literally, "She thinks she's very very". It means someone thinks highly of themselves.

But a person who was actually very important was "el mero mero", literally "the boss, boss" but was in reference to the "top dog" or "the head Honcho" or it could mean, "the best" of something.

I caught myself telling my husband that he was "echando aqua al mar" or "throwing water into the sea". Basically, I felt he was doing something pointless or fruitless.

I'm slowly turning into my father.

The main one that sticks in my mind is non Brit nurses looking for the "craic" the Irish nurses were often asking after "where's the craic?" "U don't know there's a crack? In the floor the ceiling?"

You were not in Lancashire then. 'Crack' is used in exactly the same way.

OP

South Africans have a phrase, "salt dick", meaning someone who has a foot in the UK and a foot in SA so their dick is in the sea.

There's a game in BSL where you try to make a phrase using only one hand shape, the longest I got was, "maybe there's an Arabic party in Walsall"

French has verlan which is a "backwards" slang where you switch the syllables or phonemes of certain words. Things like meuf > femme and céfran > français...

Sorry the second example was back to front!

No, OP. Out of the six thousand languages spoken on the planet, only the English are clever enough to come up with rhymes and slang.

I don't think it is an unreasonable question to ask. Many people have been taught foreign languages in quite a sterile way.

Dutch has loads by the way.

Danes have hundreds

I presumed the OP is just interested in hearing about other languages so think the slightly nasty posts are uncalled for.

I once had great discussion with with Hindi/Bengali speaking friend of mine where we discovered lots of equivalent phrases in our languages:

Can’t dance; claims floor is tilted (a bad workman blames his tools)

Everything white is not milk (all that glitters is not gold)

Fell from sky, got stuck in a date palm (out of the frying pan in to the fire)

The OP mentioned rhyming slang not if other languages have rhymes OR slang. A bit of a difference. Considering rhyming slang isn't widely used in the UK as it's a regional thing with a few exceptions that are more mainstream it's not unreasonable to wonder if this is unique. In fact I have no idea if other languages have such a thing.

Idioms though I believe all languages do or at least everybody I've met so far with another language has them.

We're a multilingual family. I speak English and Italian, DH and DD speak French (I'm trying to learn), English and Italian so there are lots of things said in one language that mean nothing in another.

You're breaking my boxes - you're annoying me.
Calling someone a potato or onion is a term of endearment.

Parisiens, têtes de chien, Parigots, têtes de veau

A bit of french rhyming slang for you, taking the mickey out of both city and countryside dwellers.

My German next door neighbour has plenty.

Of course they do op! If you are interested you can buy books listing and explaining idioms in all major languages! Have a look on Amazon.

Silly phrases and slang: of course.

Rhyming slang is very specific, but I can think of one German example:

Satz mit x (das war wohl nix), translates to „sentence with an x” meaning that was a fail.

Obviously there are silly phrases everywhere. Like a pig from under bushes comes to mind (Russian for look, that girls had a fringe). But I have only ever heard rhyming slang in lonwer class Britain. It’s really confusing (they don’t have it where I grow up) and have to keep asking people to translate.

Sorry, do you mean rhyming slang as in dog and bone or just slang that rhymes? It’s the former that I have only observed in Britain,

Messy, they both mean the same, parigot is a slang for (working class) parisien. French people love their expression, I (french) often say to dp (English) oh we have a saying for that When we discuss something, either that or it’s just my family 😉

My mum is from southern India. English was her first language but also Tamil and Hindi were spoken.

One of the phrases she says is (forgive the phonetic spelling) coom a la tay - egg on your head (someone's made a fool of you).

There are others but I can't think of them, and some are random ones my family just made up.

Dutch has loads as shown in the painting by Pieter Brueghel. An Italian work colleague has told me of several such as a rare event only happening 'when the Pope dies'.

Yes! We say killing two birds with one stone and my German colleagues say killing two flies with one swatter