Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by jaclaz | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

jaclaz

Being Italian, I find queer that I never heard anything even similar to the two cited sayings:

>I will talk about it with my horse (Italian)

>I don’t give a cabbage (Italy)

EDIT: Ok, correction, the second one, as "I don't care a cabbage" is fine.

View on HN

We do have the horse one in french : "J'en parlerais à mon cheval". It's generaly used to reply to someone questioning, nagging or bulling you, to face slapping him a bit. I'ts a sort of self-defence tactic and can be more translated by "this is not your business" than "i don't care". In the same way we have the more aggressive ones : "Est-ce que je te demande si ta grand-mère fait du vélo ?" or "Et ta sœur, elle bat le beurre ?"

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/j%E2%80%99en_parlerai_%C3%A0_...

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/et_ta_s%C5%93ur_%3F_elle_bat_...

https://www.expressio.fr/expressions/est-ce-que-je-te-demand...

"Non me ne frega un cavolo" is pretty common in Northern Italy, though I'd often go for the more vulgar "non me ne frega un cazzo." (I don't care/give a dick)

Never heard the one about the horse either.

Ahh, I see, I didn't get the meaning of "give" as "care", now it makes sense.

Yup, with "frega" probably translated into "rub".

"fregare" means to rub. "fregarsene" means to care. I forget my Italian grammar classes, but I think they're considered two different verbs.

To rub is "sfregare", "fregare" means either to steal something or to con someone. As you said, "fregarsene" means to care.

Never heard about the horse either; the cabbage thing is a translation of "non me ne importa un cavolo" (I don't care a cabbage), which is just a self-restrained version of the more common "non me ne importa un cazzo" (I don't care a dick)

I don't know them either, never heard before... also missing the more generic "I care a saw" or "dicks keying".

Might be a regional thing, like most things Italian, being from Lazio I also never heard those.

Yep, in Rome and around it, probably as someone said in another comment, "sticazzi" would be used, though I think that it has a slightly different meaning.

In Tuscany, it would be the "(but) I care (or don't care) a (beautiful) saw"->(ma) (non) m'importa una (bella) sega)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com