Currently running: Flash Fiction Fishbowl prompt call
Blog post
Published 30 November, 2011
German Phrases That Don't Matter
For fellow language nerds, some idioms to express that a choice doesn't matter, or that one is indifferent.
- Zwischen Szylla und Charybdis
- Between Scylla and Charybdis
- Die Wahl zwischen Pest und Cholera haben
- Having the choice between the plague and cholera
- Das ist mir Jacke wie Hose.
- It's to me jacket like trousers.
- ETA: I think this corresponds best with "six of one, half a dozen of the other".
- Gehupft wie gesprungen
- Skipped like jumped
- Note that usually that should be "gehüpft", but in this expression it isn't.
- Das ist mir egal.
- It's all the same to me.
- Das ist mir latte.
- It's all the same to me.
- "Latte" (the noun) means "lath". How and why it got turned into an adjective for this expression, I don't know. Maybe because laths are supposed to be the same size all around, and even?
- Alles Banane.
- Everything banana.
- There are choices, but they are pretend choices because the result is all the same?
Another random note: "Zwischen Hammer und Amboss" (between hammer and anvil) surprisingly is not the counterpart of "between a rock and a hard place", but means something like "coming under attack from both sides".
One more English expression for a choice with only bad options is "between the devil and the deep blue sea".
Can you share some idioms to the theme from another language, or that I did not think of?
Blog tags: Language