• Question: Do you have a favourite foreign phrase ?

    Asked by AshNazgDurbatulûk to Angeline, Catherine, Luke, Philip, Shona on 18 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Shona Whittam

      Shona Whittam answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      I went on a family holiday and all that sticks out is the phrase ‘tutti bambini” but maybe that is my last favourite phase. It just means “all children” in Italian because they kept calling them up to dance.

      I liked the French phrase ‘Sacre bleu’ which kinda means bloody hell. I just liked we were allowed to use it in class and it felt like a swear word.

    • Photo: Philip Moriarty

      Philip Moriarty answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      Yes. It’s an Irish phrase.

      “Go n-éirí an bóthar leat
      Go raibh an ghaoth go brách ag do chúl”

      Literal translation: “May the road rise with you. May the wind always be at your back”.

      (One of my favourite songs is called Rise” by a band called Public Image Limited (PiL) and it features the line “May the road rise with you”.)

    • Photo: Angeline Burrell

      Angeline Burrell answered on 19 Mar 2015:

      I like the phrase “mirá vos”, which is used a lot in Argentina. It literally translates to “look at you”, and it’s used as an expression of surprise at something interesting. It’s one of the phrases that’s really common in Argentina but not in other Spanish speaking countries so I think that’s why I like it.

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