Salve bellissimi!
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The last two proverbs have been encouraging and inspirational, so this week it’s time for a little humor.
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This week’s Italian saying in its ‘raw’ or unconjugated form is “fare venire il latte ai gomiti.”
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Used as a sentence it could be
“Mi fai venire il latte ai gomiti.”
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Milk? Elbows? What? When I first heard this from my friend Anna, I said ma che cosa vuol dire?! (but what does it mean?!) Like many frasi idiomatiche (idiomatic expressions), what it says and what it means are two different things.
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Anna mi ha spiegato (Anna explained to me) that you’d use it when someone is annoying you or boring you to tears (probably the closest expression in English).
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Ma perche ‘il latte ai gomiti’, che centra il latte? (But why ‘milk to the elbows’, what’s milk got to do with anything?)
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Well, according to Anna, you have to imagine how annoyed/bored/frustrated you’d feel waiting for a drop of milk to drip from your mouth all the way down to your elbow… and when someone makes you feel that way, that’s when you say (perhaps prefaced with an ‘uffa’, which is not really a word but a sound of frustration)…
Mi fai venire il latte ai gomiti!
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Listen & practice your pronunciation:
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I did a little snooping around and found out more about this crazy detto. Originally it was far venire il latte alle ginocchia, (ginocchia means knees).
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Both versions are used, and it seems like the closest expression in English is to “bore someone to tears/to death”.
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Here’s another explanation:
In italiano, si usa quando qualcosa ci annoia da morire, ci infastidisce o ci rende insofferenti. (In Italian, it is used when something bores us to death, bothers us, or makes us irritable.)
Example: “Questo politico mi fa venire il latte alle ginocchia.” (This politician bores me to tears/to death.)
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Have you ever heard this expression? Do you know of any other sayings with latte or gomito?
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Well, in English:
Don’t cry over spilt milk.
Don’t put anything in your ears but your elbows.
Are there Italian equivalents for these?
Ciao Diamante!
Allora, the first one in Italian is “Non piangere sul latte versato.”
Pero “Don’t put anything in your ears but your elbows”????
That’s a new one for me! What does it mean?
J.