From bald horses and blue almonds to gingerbread, windmills and spectacularly unfortunate elephants.
One of the joys of living in another country is discovering that people don’t just speak a different language. Sometimes, they seem to inhabit an entirely different universe of metaphors.
Take Poland, for example. In Britain, when something is easy, we call it a piece of cake. In Poland, it’s bułka z masłem — a bread roll with butter. When someone makes a mountain out of a molehill, Poles can turn a perfectly innocent sewing needle into a pitchfork. And if you’re attempting something wildly unrealistic, you might find yourself attacking the sun with a gardening hoe.
Then there are the bald horses. Apparently, two people who know each other extremely well are like a pair of bald horses. Why bald horses? What happened to their hair?
As a Brit who has made Poland his home, I’ve learned that Polish isn’t simply about vocabulary, grammatical cases or words that appear to contain seventeen consonants. It’s also about how people express humour, frustration, affection, disbelief and everyday absurdities.
Some sayings make immediate sense. Others sound as though they were overheard in a very strange dream. But idioms also preserve pieces of culture: shared experiences, literary and religious imagery, local habits and phrases that may have travelled from one language to another.
And sometimes Polish and English describe the same experience in almost the same words. Both languages know what it means to play with fire, have your head in the clouds or break somebody’s heart. Other times we choose different animals: an English person buys a pig in a poke, while a Polish person buys a cat in a sack. Different animals. Same unfortunate shopping experience.
So let’s travel through nine collections of Polish expressions, from kitchen disasters and impossible undertakings to ancient-sounding wisdom and surprising similarities with English. No Polish exam required. The bald horses have agreed to supervise.
Polish expressions you can almost eat
Perfect when somebody introduces a completely unrelated argument. Toruń is famous for gingerbread, but that alone is no proof of the saying’s origin.
Bigos is a beloved Polish stew. Making the dish is a fine idea; “making bigos” of a situation is decidedly less impressive.
A comforting snack becomes a shorthand for something straightforward. A British cake and a Polish buttered roll agree on the difficulty level.
The mustard has arrived after everyone has finished eating. It may be perfectly good mustard, but its moment has passed.
A formidable insult to both entertainment and a traditional ingredient. You need not dislike flaki to appreciate the metaphor.
Rather than eating the butter, this time you glide over it. The phrase describes a task proceeding without obstacles.
Where the wildlife has opinions
Often used of people whose friendship goes back years. One traditional explanation pictures old working horses so familiar with each other that their coats have worn thin; treat the story as an explanation of the image, not a proven etymology.
A superb way to decline ownership of somebody else’s chaos. It has travelled into English too, so it may already sound familiar.
The British buyer acquires a pig; the Polish buyer gets a cat. Neither has inspected the goods and both may regret it.
A reassuring piece of folk wisdom, especially when you are contemplating yet another coffee. The deadline may disagree.
Why summon trouble when it is behaving perfectly well somewhere else?
The pocket snake appears to defend your money against all attempts to spend it.
A vivid image of intense attention, sometimes with a suggestion of helpless fascination.
Moods, mishaps and peculiar personalities
When somebody is unusually grumpy, the Poles apparently suspect an insect infestation.
An impressive feat of unnecessary manufacturing: turning a tiny concern into a giant crisis.
You explain something repeatedly; the listener remains unmoved. The peas, meanwhile, accomplish very little.
For the record, nobody is meant to produce an actual drill. This is pressure through endless questions or requests.
Often a pointed question to someone who seems spectacularly unaware of the situation. Think of a bauble tumbling off its tree.
A wonderfully memorable excuse for terrible singing. The elephant is innocent until proven guilty.
A familiar verdict on someone who is hopeless at practical jobs.
When common sense takes a holiday
There is ambition, and then there is marching outside with a gardening tool to challenge the nearest star.
A delightfully sarcastic prediction. The full form often continues with “than…” to describe what the speaker considers impossible.
The fruit is lovely, but the tree is wrong. An ideal description of grand promises that cannot be delivered.
An informal saying for something that happens very rarely; its wording is culturally specific rather than a factual statement about calendars.
A near-perfect match with English. Consider this a preview of our final category.
Usually about getting an exceptionally good opportunity, sometimes with an ironic hint that somebody is too pleased with themselves.
Blue almonds and other mental adventures
Possibly the most attractive distraction imaginable. Your thoughts have wandered far from the matter at hand.
For reasons that have little to do with gardening, the absent idea is specifically green.
A wonderfully mismatched fruit-and-vegetable introduction to something that happens unexpectedly or without apparent connection.
To confuse, manipulate or overwhelm a person with misleading talk.
A metaphor for refusing to see beyond a narrow view of things, familiar to English speakers too.
Folklore, fear and a hint of superstition
Somewhere so remote that even the devil apparently calls it a night.
A reassuring proverb that reminds us how much our imaginations can inflate a problem.
A compact expression of resignation or dismissal. Its word-for-word reading is not a reliable explanation of its origin.
Say it before fortune notices that things have been going rather well.
An elegant image for the way anxiety can magnify a threat.
Life refuses to follow the plan
There is a famous tale of a would-be soap trader and a disastrous scheme. The anecdote is disputed as an origin story, so it deserves to be told as legend, not documented fact.
Neither the dog nor the person comes away from the encounter feeling especially triumphant.
Escaping one unpleasant situation only to land in a worse one.
A vivid expression for deadlines, financial pressure or lack of room to manoeuvre.
Words disappear into the breeze rather than becoming action.
Experience, caution and the occasional kitchen
A warning that rushing often makes things worse. The devil has apparently acquired another responsibility.
Self-deprecating national wisdom about learning a lesson a little too late.
Avoid celebrating before you know how things turn out.
A remarkably close match in meaning and kitchen imagery, though the Polish version is more dramatic about the lack of dinner.
Originally culinary in imagery, widely useful for growing ambition and desire.
When Polish and English unexpectedly agree
The same sky, the same daydreamer.
The difficulty hides in the finer points; a strikingly close verbal match.
Even the incendiary metaphor is shared. The Polish fuel just happens to be oil.
The warning survives translation almost untouched.
Sometimes no elaborate metaphor is required.
The emotional image crosses the language barrier perfectly.
Weather offers both languages the same warning of trouble ahead.
The familiar warning against judging by appearances.
Both cultures blame the morning for a bad mood, with slightly different anatomy.
An image of plans built on an unreliable foundation, associated with a wider European and biblical tradition.
Why do we sometimes land on the same metaphor, yet other times need completely different animals, ingredients or celestial gardening equipment? Some similarities come from shared European stories and religious traditions; some from phrases borrowed over centuries of contact; and others may reflect familiar human experiences. Similarity alone cannot tell us which explanation is right — but it gives us a wonderful question to explore.
That may be my favourite discovery about learning Polish: the language can seem wonderfully strange at first, yet it regularly reveals how much we have in common. And the next time someone tells me that work isn’t a hare, I shall be happy to make another coffee.
Polish readers, tell us your favourite saying — especially one that sounds completely ridiculous in English. Share it in the Brit in Poland community. The committee of bald horses welcomes corrections.