Oh, I still remember Dan's video from a few weeks ago, the one where he was chatting with his wife.
Wow, they looked like such a happy couple—so affectionate, so harmonious.
Just like that saying: "Together, a harmonious husband and wife can empty the sea." (a Vietnamese idiom)
Hmm . . .
how would you say that in English?
No.
No! No! No!
Don't bother trying to translate that idiom into English.
We don't have any sayings like that.
Really?
Yeah.
You go on back to bed and daydream some more about my old videos, okay?
Let me make a new one that'll help you out.
Yes, sir!
In this video I'm going to tell you guys about idioms, proverbs, and other sayings in Vietnamese
that have an equivalent in English.
These sayings were all recommended by fans of this channel,
so I think this video is going to be really interesting for you guys.
We're going to start with a few sayings that a lot of you might already know in English,
such as "standing on this mountain while watching the one in the distance."
In English, we say:
Imagine that you're standing in your yard,
and you take a look into the neighbor's yard.
You might think to yourself:
"Wow, the grass over there is so green!"
And when the neighbor looks into your yard, she might think:
"Oh, now that's some TRULY green grass over there!"
So, no matter which yard you're standing in:
For a realistic example, Vietnamese people often say to Americans:
If only I could go live in America.
Over there it's so modern and clean.
And then the Americans reply:
Yeah, but people over there live really isolated.
Living in Vietnam is so much more fun.
Next is a saying that compares outer appearances with the inner realities:
"better good wood than good paint"
In English, we say:
That saying is usually used with people or things that appear unattractive on the outside,
but may have great value on the inside.
And there's another saying with the opposite meaning:
What it means is that something may look beautiful and brilliant on the outside,
but on the inside there's nothing at all.
Next, we have:
You probably already know the saying "like father, like son."
It's a good, commonly used saying,
but English has got another saying that I like even more:
That sentence is usually used in a negative way,
when people feel that a young person can't give up the bad habits that they've learned from their parents.
Ah, speaking of trees reminds me of our next saying:
"one tree by itself can't raise anything,
three trees together can raise an entire mountain"
English has a saying that's not exactly the same, but pretty close:
It means that when two people think together about a problem—
"I don't understand any of this!"
—the chances of solving it are higher.
However, English and Vietnamese each have a saying that contradicts the message of the two we just looked at.
The Vietnamese saying is "lots of psychics, lots of ghosts,"
And the English one is:
. . . because everyone has their own opinion.
Add some fish.
Add some sprouts.
Add some pennywort.
Add some mushrooms.
Add some crushed rice.
Add some vinegar.
Add some beef.
Add some sausage.
Add some clams.
And in the end, you'll have a soup that no one in the world can stomach.
Next, I'm going to talk about a few more English sayings also related to cooking.
Vietnamese has the saying "avoiding a melon rind, and running into a coconut rind,"
and English has the saying:
Imagine that you're standing in a huge pan that's getting hot,
and you think to yourself:
"Oh, the heat here is killing me! I've gotta get outta here toot sweet!"
And then you hop on out . . .
and get burned up.
In trying to escape a bad situation, you find yourself in one that's much worse . . .
Our next saying is "the dog calling the cat furry."
In English, we say:
To understand this saying, you need to imagine pots and pans in the olden days,
when everything was used over an open fire.
So, the pot calling the kettle black is pretty ridiculous.
The pot appears in our next saying as well:
"one worm ruins the pot of soup."
In English, we say:
And we say it because, in reality, a rotten apple emits gases that will make all the apples around it rotten, too,
just the way one bad person in a group will cause the whole group to turn bad along with them.
In that situation, native speakers don't usually say the whole sentence
but instead just call that bad person "a bad apple."
And these "bad apples" often do something really nasty:
"eat the porridge and toss the bowl."
That saying in English is:
Next we're going to look at some sayings related to animals,
like "playing music into a buffalo's ear."
In English, we say:
Which, in a literal sense, means to throw pearls in front of a bunch of pigs.
And its figurative meaning is the same as the Vietnamese saying,
that is, to present something interesting and beautiful—particularly literature, music, or art—
to a subject who's too stupid or too uncultured to grasp the value of it.
Next, we have "the drop that made the cup overflow."
In English, we say:
In this saying, the "straw" isn't a drinking straw, but grass straw.
If you keep piling straw onto a camel's back,
eventually there will be a single piece that breaks it.
With this idiom, we don't usually say the whole sentence
but instead just say, "That's the last straw,"
when frustration has piled upon frustration to the point that you just can't take it anymore.
Oh, that poor broken-backed camel.
Camels are used for riding and for transporting goods, right?
And so are horses.
So let's look at the saying "horses with horses, buffalo with buffalo."
That saying in English is:
It has the same meaning as the Vietnamese saying,
but I find that it's usually used in a way that's . . .
more negative and sarcastic.
Kind of like:
We're going to finish there.
But before I turn off my camera, I've got two final things I want to say.
First is that the list of idioms in this video isn't exhaustive.
There are some more Vietnamese idioms with an equivalent in English.
Maybe someday I'll make a sequel to this video.
And the second thing I want to say is that . . .
it seems that on the internet there are some really long lists of English idioms in Vietnamese,
because a few people copy-pasted them in the comments.
However, I don't think they're very good.
For example, the saying "a miss is as good as a mile."
Maybe it's commonly used in other countries,
or maybe it was commonly used a century ago,
but I personally have never heard it.
Sounds plausible, but I've never heard it.
Never heard it.
I don't understand the meaning all that clearly, either.
Never heard it.
I've never heard ANY of these!
So please don't believe this or that idiom is cool and commonly used in English-speaking countries
just because some goofy page like this—
or like this—
or like this wrote it.
Or copied it.
Sheesh, all the Vietnamese "study English" pages steal so much,
it's impossible to know who created it in the first place.
Oh, right, there's one more thing.
This video was brought to you with support from ELSA,
a mobile app that can provide you with detailed corrections of your English pronunciation.
See? It doesn't just tell you that you mispronounced it,
but also tells you where you pronounced it wrong,
and how close you are to being correct.
If you want to try it, then download it from Google Play or The App Store.
It's completely free for the first seven days.
After that, if you want to continue using it,
go to elsaspeak.com/danhauer,
and follow the three steps there to check out with a price discounted from 10 to 80 per cent.
If you do that, you'll be improving your pronunciation, and supporting this channel, too.
Good for you, and good for me.
Oh, and one more thing: some of you might have been curious about this picture.
I didn't draw it. My wife did.
Isn't she talented?
Oh, and one more small thing.
I know many of you have been wanting to see the baby once it's born.
Well . . .
here you go!
I'm actually not sure if it's a boy or a girl,
I haven't had time to check.