Cross-cultural idioms

In a prior thread, we briefly touched on cross-cultural idioms, a topic I find endlessly fascinating. I have always wanted to turn this into a full-fledged thread, and now I got beaten to the punch (an idiom, BTW, that does not exist in German).

Food shmooze

No matter what topic we start with, talk will turn eventually to food (happens on Rex's xword blog, too). Mac's mentioning of Grünkohl, Dutch version, in the "Hope won!" thread made not only my mouth water, but also that of another reader (see the first comment). So, let's move the food talk to this new thread and continue with politics on the preceding one (eventually, we'll have to create a new political thread, too. But as long as the old one stays "above the fold", I don't see the need for starting a new one).

Hope won!

Pictures of Americans crying for joy are going around the world and reactions from all over the world are pouring in: The image of America has changed literally over night. What a night, what a day after!

Word of the month: Maulfaul, mundfaul

Maulfaul—or mundfaul—is an adjective adding faul ("lazy") to Maul ("mouth" of animals) or Mund ("mouth" of people). It literally means "mouth-lazy" and could be translated as "uncommunicative" or "taciturn". But it connotes taciturnity with an attitude, the result of boredom, or an expression of passive resistance. You could call a student who answers a question by a teacher with a shrug "uncommunicative", but maulfaul captures the underlying attitude in a more graphic way, calling up the image of a mouth too lazy to move. That's why I'm fond of the word.