I only realized *just how many* idioms I use and *just how often* a couple years ago when I became friends with someone who was an exchange student from China working on getting her Master’s degree. She was fluent in English (at the very least, she understood English more than enough to be able to take all her classes in English every day + speak English to everyone + understand everything I was saying to her) with one big exception, that being whenever I’d use an idiom. It would always yield a big “?”
One particular time, I remember saying “oh, we can play it by ear” and she was so confused. I know intuitively what that phrase means and how to use it, but while I was trying to explain what I meant in plainer terms I realized how bizarre of a phrase it is. I actually haven’t looked into the origin of that particular phrase, but even if I knew where it came from, it’s such a strange thing to hear and be expected to understand if you haven’t grown up around it, and not something you can just KNOW without having heard it a million times. I can’t even imagine how surreal that’d feel. Like, knowing a language, and then having someone utter a phrase that makes zero sense whatsoever based on the (correct) meanings you’ve learned of all of the words involved in the phrase. Some idioms you can kinda figure out what it’s suggesting from context, but that one? How could you ever
After that, that particular idiom became an in-joke that we used often, but in general I made a conscious effort to speak really plainly and avoid cutting corners in my sentences by throwing in idioms whenever possible (as I had grown accustomed to). I found it so difficult to do; only through that did I realize how many I use and how often I use them.
All of that is to say, now that I’m learning Japanese, I can hardly imagine how many phrases I have yet to encounter that literally will make zero sense (even if I’ve obtained a full understanding of the language) unless I’m “in the know” about them. I imagine the only real way to pick up on them is to have conversations like the one I had with her where I go “?” to something a Japanese speaker says and have it explained to me more plainly.
I don’t know if idioms and “set phrases” are always synonymous, maybe it’s like, all idioms are set phrases but not all set phrases are idioms. Because I know the set phrase(s) 「仕方がない」 and its variants and I love that one, but I don’t know if it counts as an idiom. That one feels pretty easy to understand even if you’ve never heard it used before. I don’t know though.
*TLDR: got any personal favorite / interesting / pretty commonly used but make zero sense unless you’re “in the know” / etc Japanese idioms you’d be willing to share? I’m interested in learning a bunch of them. I wonder how many have near 1:1 “English equivalents” or how many are like, exclusively used in Japan. I know 「悪因悪果」, spelled「あくいんあっか」from WaniKani but idk how common that really is. I think the IDEA of that one has similarities to other English ones, probably something biblical, but I don’t think there’s one exactly like it.*
*If you do share something, I really appreciate it!*
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At work the other day someone said 泣き面にハチ bees to a crying face
These are more aphorisms than idioms, but both confused me considerably when I first ran into them because they appeared in clipped forms (like how in English we often just say “Fool me once…” or “Give a man a fish…”)
勝てば官軍負ければ賊軍 – *If you win you’re the government army, if you lose you’re the rebel army*
坊主憎けりゃ袈裟まで憎い – *If you hate a priest, you’ll even hate his kesa*
Funny enough just like your Chinese friend I also didn’t understand what “play it by ear meant” I thought you were talking about playing a piece of music without notation lol. Now, I don’t actually know what idioms really are, but this one from Sonic Adventure 2 stood out to me
虎穴に入らずんば虎子を得ず- you will not get the tiger cub without entering the tiger’s den. I.e nothing ventured, nothing gained.
仏の顔も三度 is one that always tickled me (basically, talking about people who are very calm but if you keep annoying them they go from zero to 100)
猫に小判 is basically “pearls before swine”
同じ穴の狢 literally “badgers from the same hole”, usually used when something/someone appears superficially different but is actually the same. Often negative, e.g. you see it in discussions about politics.
“Play it by ear” comes from music. Generally a musician will learn a piece of music by playing off of sheet music, tablature, piano roll, or some other form of notation. However, musicians also usually (and should) learn to play music by ear, which means being able to reproduce a piece of music that you’ve only heard, without looking at notation or having someone tell you the notes. Often times this involves a bit of improvisation and trial and error, due to the nature of playing something from memory. This idea was then applied idiomatically to any situation where you need to do something without prior preparation, usually implying improvisation and trial and error.