I'll Show You From Where the Fish Pisses!

This blog is getting way too depressing, and since I'm trying to keep busy while I wait until Monday to hear the decision on my Aliyah application, I decided to write this post that is much more light hearted than has been the norm around here.

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Most sayings and idiomatic phrases in English have obvious meanings. When you hear someone say "snowball's chance in Hell" for the first time it's not hard to figure out that it means "highly unlikely." Not the case, so far as I can tell, with Hebrew. For example, there's a common Hebrew idiom that's literally translated as "from the face" but actually means crude or unlikable. No matter how much I think about it, I don't know why "from the face" should have a negative connotation, but alas, it does. I think the reason Hebrew doesn't carry over to English well is because Hebrew is a more simple language with a more limited vocabulary. I'm by no means impugning the language, but for the sake of entertainment it's worthwhile to explore the disastrous results of mixing Hebrew and English.

For example, there's another phrase in Hebrew that is literally translated as "from where the fish pisses". It simply means, "how it's done." You think you can beat me at [whatever activity]?? I'll show you from where the fish pisses! That's more or less how the phrase is used. If you said that to someone in English, however, not only would people not get what you were trying to say, they would probably think you've lost your marbles. On the opposite side of that coin, it's not so easy explaining English sayings to a native Hebrew speaker. At least, such is the case with my dad whose English is good but not great. The other day I unsuccessfully tried to explain to him for ten minutes what "other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the show?" meant. He knew who Abraham Lincoln was, he knew that he was assassinated, but I couldn't get the point of that expression across to him. My dad has told me jokes in English that he heard originally in Hebrew that make no sense at all. That's one of the most interesting thing about learning a second language; you realize just how peculiar and imperfect languages really are, and that translating from one to another is a tricky business that shouldn't be taken lightly.  My dad, as fate would have it, had to learn this the hard way.

One of my mom's boyfriends that we moved in with when I was a kid was named Stewart. My dad visited me for a few hours one time when my mom and I were living with him, and for some reason I had a big scratch on my face. I don't remember how I got the scratch, but it certainly wasn't because Stewart or anyone else hit me.

Anyway, my dad said to Stewart in his decent but not fantastic English "I don't know if you did this to my son, but if I find out you did, I'm gonna show you where the fish is making pee pee!" and walked away without letting him respond. All the better to let the gravity of that sentence sink in so that Stewart would know he wasn't fucking around. I could imagine Stewart, staying up to the wee hours of the night, sweating, scared and wired on his twelfth cup of coffee, trying to figure it out. Where, exactly, is the fish making pee pee?

Fast forward to my mom, dad, and Stewart, ending up in court. The reason: threatening violence. My dad had to explain, in a public court, what he meant exactly when he told this man "I'm gonna show you from the where the fish is making pee pee." The charges ended up getting dropped. It's probably punishment enough to have to explain that in front of an audience. My dad had a lawyer who spoke Hebrew that never thought it prudent to explain to my dad, even after reading the charges, that this phrase in particular does not translate well. He didn't find out that no one had any idea what he was talking about until the middle of the proceedings. The moral: when translating languages, approach with extreme caution.