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Snake and stick and dog

Posted by ESC on February 23, 2001

In Reply to: Snake and stick and dog posted by Sebastian Schneider on February 23, 2001

: Hunde, die bellen, beissen nicht (Barking Dogs never bite).

: Given the explanation above, "killing a snake and showing the stick" has no corresponding proverb in German. Maybe I just cant think of it, but I believe theres just no phrase to express this.

: My 2 cents about your discussion:
: I think, every culture and language has its own phrases for certain situations. And each culture has phrases for certain situations, like "Barking dogs ...." which should be common in every language, though the words used to express the situation are different. And then, there are the phrases which are specific to a certain culture, like "Der Krug geht solange zum Brunnen, bis er bricht" (The jug walks to the well until it breaks) - which means, that you repeat things until they are all messed up (or: that you stick to traditions and cannot change your behaviour, which means that you "break"). There might be a similar phrase in other languages, but I doubt that.

: Got my point ? ;) (Im German, so my English is rather bad ...)

: Sebastian

Point well taken. Your English looks good to me! What I've found interesting is how old some phrases are. So many of our modern sayings, in several languages, have a common ancestor.

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