or: Expressions in other languages

One of the challenges of learning a new language is understanding the idiosyncrasies and how it’s used on a daily basis rather than from a textbook.

The best way to do this is by listening to conversations and trying to understand what is being said.

I was at drinks earlier this week with another couple and everyone was chatting away in Creole. I can understand some Creole but I don’t have enough words to be able to hold a conversation properly yet. I can respond to questions though sometimes I forget which language is coming out of my mouth and tend to answer in English more often than Creole when I do actually know the phrase in Creole.

I’m working on this part.

For the parts that I don’t understand in the conversation, I ask someone to translate into English so I can follow it again. Sometimes it’s a phrase, sometimes a sentence, sometimes a whole paragraph.

Anyway, there I was listening and I knew they were talking about exercise and losing weight. One person thought they had put on quite a bit over the years and previously had a “tablette chocolat” and the others then laughed.

This phrase is obvious in that it translates to English as chocolate tablet but I couldn’t understand what was quite so funny. How was eating a chocolate bar going to make anyone larger – it’s all in the quantities and amount of exercise, right?

So I asked for an explanation.

When the laughter died down, it was explained to me that his stomach use to look like those bars of chocolate which you break into squares to eat – a chocolate tablet.

His stomach had previously been divided into those squares ie he had abs you could see.

They then joked and said the chocolate has now melted.

That would have been funny in itself but what I found funny in that expression (aside from it is a great expression!) is how in English, we tend to refer to the same thing as 6-pack abs.

This then had me thinking about why are the athletic looking lumps of muscles, that people work quite hard to achieve, named after food and drink that typically has to be avoided in order to have them visible in the first place? 

That just seems cruel!

So now I’m thinking about having chocolate tablet abs though really, I’m thinking about chocolate.

Awesome expression!

 

Thanks to Lartiste featuring Awa Imani for the title to this post. He’s a Moroccan guy singing in French which makes a change from the usual music I post. Here’s the YouTube video for those interested. It’s a catchy tune.