What’s the best way to strike up a conversation? Talk about the weather!
That’s how it seems to work in many Western cultures.
When I learned English, my teacher told me that Westerners like to talk about the weather... At that time, I think 'Why would anyone find the weather interesting?' Because the weather in Vietnam is pretty much the same.Hoa Pham
In this first episode of The Idiom, host Rune Pedersen looks at how weather shows up in idioms, and what that says about the culture we’re all living in.
This very social use of language idioms tell us something about identity. If you know the same idioms as me, and you know how to use them, you're part of the team.Howard Manns
Get your head out of the clouds and listen to the full episode now. And follow The Idiom in your podcast app to hear all upcoming episodes in the series.
The Idiom is a podcast about how language shapes the way we see the world and each other. Idioms are often the hardest part of a language to master because you need to understand the cultural context.
This series will help you see that bigger picture, and maybe understand our multicultural and multilingual world a little better.
The Idiom is an SBS Audio podcast produced by Think HQ CultureVerse
Host: Rune Pedersen
Producers: Bridget Bourke, Jacob Agius, Beaurey Chan, Mie Sorensen & Stefan Delatovic
Writers: Rune Pedersen and Stefan Delatovic
Art and design: Wendy Tang
Design direction: Melissa Hill
SBS Audio team: Caroline Gates, Joel Supple, Max Gosford
Guests: Howard Manns, Hoa Pham, Rita Wilson
Other voices: Jess Glass, Shanaka Katugampala, Virginia Henshall, Nicolas Ojeda Amador, Neelam Yadav, Josh Popow (Patron 1), Stefan Delatovic (Patron 2), Fiona Nixon, Mie Sorensen, Rebecca Song, Miko Hernandez, Hoa Pham, Rune's mother, Beaurey Chan (Sailor), Rune Pedersen (Captain), Güler Arslantaş, Chloe Favre, Jen Sharpe and Lauren Brown.
Other contributions: Taryn Marks, Think HQ Managing Director Jen Sharpe and the Think HQ team
Transcript
Rune Pedersen 00:00
I'm recording this on Saturday, Melbourne is sunny and hot, but the weather app thinks it will be storming and raining in about an hour. So I'm throwing caution to the wind and heading for the pub. These back streets and laneways are mostly empty. The wind is warm on my face, kind of like a hair dryer set on low. And there's just this one stubborn fly that clings to my face.
I can hear the aircon's working overtime from every other house. It’s just me out today.
I kind of feel like I'm in a western.
A guy from Denmark who’s lost his way but who's found himself a new beautiful home in upside down land in Australia. Hi, I'm Rune and welcome to “The Idiom”, a Podcast where we explore the weird and wonderful language from around the world,
Voice 01:00
Let's not beat around the bush.
Voice 01:00
[speaking in-language]
Rune Pedersen 01:02
to better understand how people tick and how I can talk to as many of them as possible.
Voice 01:07
See you later alligator!
Voice 01:08
[speaking in-language]
Voice 01:11
[speaking in-language]
Rune Pedersen 01:16
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we work - the Yaluk-ut Weelam Clan of the Boon Wurrung, Naarm. We pay our respects to the elders’ past, present and emerging as we tried to live up to their example as storytellers.
Patron 1 01:35
G’day mate! It is bloody getting out of hand out there.
Patron 2 01:39
Digger! Pull up a pew.
Patron 1 01:41
Righto mate, righto. I’m definitely hitting up the bar before I miss the boat.
Patron 2 01:45
And it’s still cats and dogs out there?
Patron 1 01:47
Mate it's absolutely [speaking Australian slang]… silver linings though - excuse to pop in here have a couple of Victor Bravos
Rune Pedersen 01:55
This is exactly how I imagined Australia would sound, and it does! But it also sounds like this.
Voice 02:02
Hello.
Voice 02:02
Hello.
Voice 02:03
Hey, nice to see you.
Voice 02:03
G’day Butler!
Voice 02:05
Hello.
Rune Pedersen 02:06
And this.
Voice 02:07
[speaking in-language]
Voice 02:08
[speaking in-language] 您好啊
Rune Pedersen 02:11
G’day mate! Australia is multicultural. The last census found that more than half the population was either born overseas - Hey, that's me - or has a parent born overseas.
Rune’s Mother 02:22
[speaking in-language]
Rune Pedersen 02:28
What are you hearing in the background is my mother talking on the phone from Denmark. And it's about when I was a young child, I would come to her and ask for new words I would like to learn. I would ask her to write them down on a piece of paper. And then I would go and look in the dictionary because I just love learning new words.
I don't know how long that lasted. But I noticed early on that language is just… Well, it is a kind of superpower. See, the best things in life come from connecting with other people. And that's how you get relationships and friendship, and maybe even love. And language unlocks that. Especially a fish out of water like me.
Rune Pedersen 03:10
I was born in Denmark and spent some time in Germany before ending up in Melbourne. English is my second language. And Danish is my first. And German is this ongoing mistress that I fall in and out of love with. She just wants things in a very particular order. And I don't always comply.
Rune Pedersen 03:31
In my day-to-day life, I work with translators and interpreters and different communities to make sure communication campaigns work across different languages. This has only made me much more fascinated with how different languages communicate the same ideas, particularly figurative expressions, like metaphors and idioms.
Rune Pedersen 03:53
If I'm saying “I'm biting off more than I can chew” ... So, if I say I might be biting off more than I can chew with this podcast, you know, I don't mean that I'm actually eating the podcast, right? You know, I'm just saying that I'm… out of my depth! That it's ambitious. That's what idioms are. Those weird things we say where we all agree on what they mean, even though if we were to examine them, quite literally, they wouldn't make any sense. Idioms are fun and silly and really colorful, and I think they're just the best thing since sliced bread.
Rune Pedersen 04:30
My goal is to be able to talk to as many people as possible, with different backgrounds than my own. To learn more about the languages and the cultures surrounding us, and I have this sneaking suspicion that idioms could play a really important role in this journey. I don't know exactly how, but I'm gonna find out.
Rune Pedersen 04:50
Even though I'm constantly thinking about language for my job, I want to discuss my thoughts with an expert. So I asked Howard Manns, a linguist from Monash University, specialized in Aussie slang, to help me define what idioms are, and the functions they serve. Howard and I had a great chat over zoom.
Howard 05:07
An idiom is any set of words that come together that don't have a really obvious meaning just by looking at the words. An example of this is like, if I say to you break a leg - meaning good luck - I mean, break a leg doesn't really make sense, you know, go out and break a leg. If I invite you over to my party and say, Bring a plate. Well, you might show up with a plate, but the key here in Australia is knowing that that plate better have some food on it to share with other people.
Rune Pedersen 05:38
So what kind of function do you see them serve in language, in society and culture? It's a big question.
Howard 05:44
What's really special about idioms is idioms are metaphorical and creative ways of using language. And new words changing language actually lights up the same parts of the brain as sex and drugs. And language would be really flat if we didn't have these metaphorical usages in this creativity. But that brings us to this very social use of language: idioms tell us something about identity. If you know the same idioms as me, and you know how to use them, you're part of the team. You know, we, in some sense, have this shared background.
But idioms also fill a very special role in society, too. We often see idioms creep up around sensitive topics like taboo topics. I'm part of a research team looking at Australian slang. And we've actually found that a lot of the classic Australian slang idioms creep up around topics like somebody who is being arrogant and calling them a tall poppy are saying that they have tickets on themselves, or somebody who is unattractive and saying that they've got a face like smashed pie, for instance.
Rune Pedersen 06:54
So what are the things that that you think that we can learn from idioms about our own language or other languages?
Howard 07:02
Yeah, I think that there are instances where they do reveal something about culture and language. But also, we need to be a little bit careful about extrapolating too much. A lot of our idioms are actually embedded in literature, for instance, idioms like - wear my heart on my sleeve, in a pickle for being in trouble, a wild goose chase, somebody's eating you out of house and home - all of these idioms are actually from Shakespeare. So being aware of these kinds of idioms and following up the history of these kinds of idioms actually take you back into the literature and knowing this sort of stuff is really important and relevant to culture.
Rune Pedersen 07:43
So, how, I'm curious to hear what you think. When do we use idioms?
Howard 07:48
Idioms, I mean, for the most part, once you get to a certain level of fluency in a conversation, I mean, you're going to be using idioms all the time. And we're not even always aware that we're using these idioms. But in general, there are times that idioms come up in speech a little bit more than other times. Sometimes it's in performance. Sometimes it's when, for instance, Australian identity comes up or when you're meeting somebody, and you want to show them that you know a little bit about the local cultural context, you might use them. Raining cats and dogs is a great one too, because I think it highlights how idioms do or don't go from one language to the other. And how when it comes to interpreting and translating, you know, with idioms here, there’d be dragons. Another idiom to describe idioms in the sense that, you know. In English, we talk about raining cats and dogs, the Irish talk about bucketing down. But in Spanish, if you said raining cats and dogs, it would be a little bit weird.
Rune Pedersen 08:55
Do we have sort of universal themes that goes across, across languages?
Howard 09:00
Yeah, it's, it's a really interesting question. And, thinking about the way that idioms translate across different contexts, I was reminded of the way that people talk about venereal diseases. And the English call syphilis Spanish pox. The French call it the Neapolitan disease. The Italians call it the French malady. The polls call it the German disease. The Russians call it the Polish disease. The Turks call it the Christian disease, and the Tahitians, to round things up, call it the British disease, you know.
Rune Pedersen 09:32
It's not us. It's the other guys.
Howard 09:35
Exactly. So you can see how you take this single concept and it gets wrapped up in perspective. But to come back to your point about whether or not something is universal to think about how people do small talk, because there are a lot of idiomatic expressions embedded in small talk, because small talk by its very nature needs to be quite safe and idioms in the beginning are quite safe.
Rune Pedersen 10:10
I once stood at a urinal minding my own business. When the guy next to me asked,
Guy 10:15
How are you going?
Rune Pedersen 10:16
Being Danish I thought this was a funny place to ask someone how they're feeling. And it would be rude for me not to answer. So I proceeded to tell him how I felt. And I think I even told him my plans for the weekend. And then I asked him, What about you? And he did not respond. So through this, I learned that Australians start conversations without actually wanting one. “How are you going?” is actually an idiom. It doesn't mean what it says. It’s just a way of saying, “We're here”. As if, “Do not to be startled, kind sir. I too, have arrived upon the urinal. Merely to relieve myself, just as you. I do not wish to engage in conversation. Be well!” And that makes it an ideal icebreaker.
Sailor 11:07
Captain! We won't make it unless we break the ice.
Captain 11:11
Aye aye. Leave it with me. It sure is raining cobbler boys out there.
Sailor 11:18
Wait. Ugh?
Rune Pedersen 11:19
Of course when I say icebreaker, I'm using an idiom for that thing you say to get the conversation flowing. It works because you're kinda like warming up to the person, you know, you're getting unstuck. But in order for that to work, it's important we understand the same reference. Idioms are everywhere, hidden in chats and sentences. And sometimes they're just outright weird. When it comes to getting conversations off on the right foot, I found Australians love nothing more than to talk about the weather. I think it's because the weather is just different most days, but at the same time, the weather is just always there. Like it's something we are all observing and it's a safe harbor.
Weather idioms are great examples of how these little turns of phrases can spark chats, fill silence, and overcome inhibitions.
Rune Pedersen 12:06
Is it a hot day? Turn to the person next to you at the bus stop and say “it's as dry as a dead dingo's donger out here!”. Back in Denmark, it rarely gets really hot. But it does get really cold - dog cold - or as we would say – ‘HUNDEKOLDT’, not quite as crass as down under. While here it may rain cats and dogs...
Person 1 12:27
In Turkish we would say [speaking in Turkish], which means it's raining like the water is divorcing the glass.
Person 2 12:35
In French we say [speaking in French]. And that's pretty much saying it's raining like a pissing cow.
Rune Pedersen 12:41
And in Denmark, it rains [speaking in Danish]. Weather colonizes other topics too. Feeling happy? You're on Cloud Nine. Overreacting? Storm in a teacup. Postponing? Take a rain check. And in Serbia, someone who's vain is ripping clouds with his nose. So it really feels like the weather is a safe harbour to start conversations. Let's find some more idioms.
Hoa 13:07
Hi, Rune. Thank you for inviting me on the podcast.
Rune Pedersen 13:10
This is Hoa. She's from Vietnam. And I've asked her to come on the podcast to chat a bit about language. Hoa, do you also use weather small talk in Vietnam?
Hoa 13:18
No, not really. In fact, when I learned English when I was young, my first thought when my teacher told me that Westerners like to talk about the weather is that, oh, their culture is quite different from us. Because at that time, I think the weather is of no interest. Like why would anyone find the weather interesting. So I find the Westerns are strange in that, and I think when my teacher said that my other classmates also found it strange or amusing.
Rune Pedersen 13:44
Why do you think it's not a topic of interest?
Hoa 13:47
Well, I guess partly because the weather in Vietnam is pretty much the same. And there aren't a lot of weather events that stand out like in Melbourne, where you can see four seasons in a day. But now that I leave and work in Australia, I can totally understand the mentality behind talking about the weather.
Rune Pedersen 14:07
Okay, so the weather is not really the universal silver bullet I thought it was when it comes to starting conversations with people. I wonder what Howard thinks.
Howard 14:15
Yes, a lot of people will talk about weather, but weather doesn't always get you very far in some context. As an example, in the Indonesian context, in many parts of Indonesia, at least, you know what the weather is going to be. So really, you will talk about the weather. You'll say something like [speaking in Indonesian] it's hot, but that won't get you very far or [speaking in Indonesian] it's raining, but that won't get you far that kind of thing.
Where in Indonesian small talk the way it normally will progress in the beginning when you see somebody, Okay, [speaking in Indonesian] where are you going? And that's kind of like how are you? It's not, they don't really care. Most of the time, the answer that you can give is just Okay, [speaking in Indonesian] I'm just walking around. And just like how are you if you begin telling In Indonesia, where you're going throughout the day, they're gonna think you're a bit weird. You might talk about the weather. But like I said, that doesn't get you very far. What you're more apt to do in Indonesia, especially in Java, which I'm most familiar with, is you're going to ask some really basic questions that might seem kind of offensive to outside people, like, how old are you? How much money do you make? Are you married? Do you have children? And this can seem kind of invasive actually, to, to an English speaker.
But it's actually to place you in society. You know, it's to give the person that you're speaking to a sense of well, what kind of language do I use with you? Should I be formal? Should it be less formal, that kind of thing. One thing that's very clear is that there's a certain degree of engaging in small talk with strangers where you use idioms where you keep the conversation relatively safe. But what happens as the conversation progresses is going to vary quite a bit.
Rune Pedersen 16:01
All right, so different cultures start conversations in different ways. So if I want to be able to talk to anyone, I need to learn a little bit more about their culture, and consider their perspective rather than imposing mine. While giving a talk on translated communication campaigns at Monash University, I knocked on Professor Rita Wilson’s door, an expert in translation studies, to discuss idioms in a multilingual context. Rita, how can idioms and other similar expressions help us with understanding culture and people?
Rita 16:34
So I think because they are metaphoric, and because therefore, the figurative language needs to be explained in different terms for someone. I think that's how they help us understand cultures. There are a lot of shared idioms across multiple languages, but they won't necessarily remain in the same semantic area. I’ll give you an example. If we have an idiom that is based on animal imagery, what comes to mind is, you know, pigs might fly, in English, that animal imagery is retained in Spanish, but it's when frogs grow hair. Okay, so the image of the animal remains, although we've translated, you know, transfer the animal so we get the sense of it, but I'm…
Rune Pedersen 17:21
Okay. Speaking with Rita and Howard I can see how some idioms are shared across languages, but they will be expressed through different perspectives, making them really challenging to translate. This makes me think, Rita, does speaking a particular language enforce a particular worldview?
Rita 17:38
I wouldn't say it enforces it, it certainly shapes it. It's well documented, again, that multilingualism leads to more creativity. And I think we don't recognise it, the kind of policy that values multilingualism that understands it as a benefit to society also is a more inclusive policy. The other kind of policy which is referred to sometimes as a deficit approach that sees it as a problem and as a cost, then turns language into a barrier for inclusion. People who arrive in a country where there is a recognition, they come from different cultures, different languages, that can produce some creative solutions to things or can produce different ways of thinking about it is a much more inclusive approach. So language policy debates or language ideology debates often then become debates that have to do with citizenship, belonging, specifically belonging, and inclusion.
Rune Pedersen 18:33
If you can change anything about how we live in a multilingual society, what would it be?
Rita 18:39
I would love to have more awareness within our general society about the role of language. And what I mean by that is exactly what we've been talking about: how the role of language affects the way we think about things, the way we negotiate, the way we solve problems. But if we want to support social inclusiveness, we need to recognise the role that language plays in that. And I think what we do, again, generalizing, is that we will pay attention to things like demographics and sociological issues and economic issues. And language will be invisible and inaudible in all of these conversations. So that's what I would love to do, I would and it comes back to valuing multilingualism, valuing the diversity that it brings, the creativity that it brings, the positive impact it can have economically as well as culturally and creatively. So if there's more of an awareness of the role of language, then there's more likely to be a valuing of that multilingualism. We talk about multiculturalism, we very seldom talk about: multiculturalism is predicated on multilingualism. But at the heart of multiculturalism is multilingualism.
Rune Pedersen 19:48
Idioms add color to the mundane and make language come to life. And when you discover new ones, it's kinda like finding small treasures that can expand your vocabulary. But I think there’re a lot more than that. They are an expression of human creativity, and can express identity and to some extent, culture. In Australia, we speak hundreds of languages. And if we count dialects, we are easily in the thousands. And all of these languages contain points of views. These perspectives are kinda like shapes in a kaleidoscope, that helps us see things in a new way. So join me this season on The Idiom as I explore the way we speak, think and connect across cultures across languages. I love to end today's episode with a snippet from my chat with Howard where he shares a Farsi idiom about missing someone. I find it really beautiful. And it makes me think about the people that I really miss.
Howard 20:45
One in Farsi that sticks out to me is rather than saying I miss you, oftentimes people will say, your place will be empty, [speaking in Farsi]. And I really like that sense of rather than saying, Oh, I'll miss you if you're going on a journey that your place will be empty because in a way, that's a beautiful way to talk about the, the impact that somebody's non presence will have on you. And you know, that's the great thing I think about idioms in other languages is that you take a slight left or right turn in understanding what it means to be human.
Rune Pedersen 21:27
So until next time, [speaking in Farsi], your place will be empty. The Idiom is a production of Think HQ CultureVerse and SBS. It’s hosted by me, Rune Pederson. This episode is produced by Bridget Bourke, Jacob Agius, Stefan Delatovik, and written by me and Stefan. Our artwork is by Wendy Tang. Follow and review us wherever you found this podcast on the SBS audio app and tell us your favorite idiom at theidiom@sbs.com.au.
