Our Reg reader 'mutt's nuts' dictionary is le chien's biens

Last month, we provoked quite a linguistic rumpus when we unwisely described our Vulture 2 spaceplane's magnificent livery as les noix du mutt. This immediately prompted protests at the use of noix for French goolies, and we threw the matter over to our beloved readers, inviting them to also provide international translations …

[JimmyPage]

"Don Coglioni"

this ------->

[The Axe]

Persian

In persian dog bollocks is "toock-me saq" (or something sounding like that). However it's not a term used for praise as its one of the most offensive swear words possible - dogs not being seen as clean animals in the Muslim country.

[SiempreTuna]

Wot no e-Spanish?!

I'm guessing it would be something like cojones de un pero .. though I'm sure no Spaniard would have a clue what you're talking about.

[SiempreTuna]

Re: Wot no e-Spanish?!

Just been reliably informed that the Spanish would be 'cojones de perro' - and that it wouldn't anything to a Spaniard

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Wot no e-Spanish?!

The equivalent phrase in Spanish would be puta madre (Lit: The whore's mother); but as that involves neither dogs nor bollocks I kept quiet last time.

[theModge]

This article does feature my favourite (and only) welsh word

Who knew that a microwave is a popty ping?

[Rob Carriere]

Re: This article does feature my favourite (and only) welsh word

Makes sense to me. The stuff inside goes 'popty' and then the microwave says 'ping'.

[Elmer Phud]

Re: This article does feature my favourite (and only) welsh word

which would make a mess of the mutts nuts if put on high for a few minutes

[TRT]

Re: This article does feature my favourite (and only) welsh word

Whereas in Wales a Pop Tart is Cerys Matthews.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Middle East

There is a takeaway dish offered called Bull's Eggs.

Perhaps in many countries the items in question suggest Eggs rather than Balls.

[Angol]

Polish - "dog's bollocks" = "psia jaja", literally "dog eggs"; like the Thais Poles term "gonads" "eggs", so "hung like a stallion"'s equivalent is a reference to "eggs like balloons". The meaning of "dog's bollocks" is conveyed by "zajebisty" = "exceedingly good", a word, like "f'ing good" incorporating a popular expression for sexual congress.

You can drink to your new knowledge of Polish in a charming bar in the fine city of Bielsko-Biała that calls itself The Dog's Bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW..

Here in Jersey a local car parts shop used the phrase "Le Nads Du Chien" on promotional car stickers. It always bugged me that they used the singular "Le" instead of the plural "Les", we're supposed to be good with our French over here :)

[Rob Carriere]

Dutch

In Dutch you'd get either 'de hond zijn ballen' or 'de hond zijn kloten', but that wouldn't normally be used as an expression of praise. Once upon a time, there were some people who were using 'de tieten van Jezus' (the tits of Jesus) in a similar way, but it's been decades since I last heard that one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dutch

Or you could just use "hondekloten"... it's a lot shorter,

but not exactly used as an expression of praise...

[Matt 21]

Re: Dutch

..or as I mentioned last time, in Buxelloises/Brussels zwanze (a mix of a Flemish dialect and French if you like) it would be "tof in den hof" or perhaps just "tof".

By the way, anyone know how to say it Klingon? This looks like the sort of site with readers who'd know......

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dutch

In Afrikaans the phrase "die hond se ballas" is used, although "bakgat" (baked bum / hot-arse) is the more common colloquial superlative.

Talking of bollocks - there's also the related South African tradition of 'leeuloop' (lion-walk) where (after sufficient alcoholic encouragement) grown men drop their pants, get on their hands and knees, squeeze their nuts behind their legs and roar like lions.

[TRT]

Nadsat?

I can't find a Nadsat word for dog, but I'd suggest either

Shansharray (Chien's sharries) or Doggiewog's yarbles?

[JimmyPage]

Re: Nadsat?

IIRC Nadsat was loosely derived from Russian (Burgess created a future where the youth aped Russian culture, rather than US culture).

So it would need a more slavic flavour.

'fraid that's all I can contribute - my Russian is non-existent

[TRT]

Re: Nadsat?

Loosely, yes. But there were the occasional French and German words, schoolboy baby-speak (eggy-weggy for example), and other languages thrown in. Just to make it sound real horrorshow.

[IanDK]

Danish

What a fascinating topic :)

In Danish I'd go for "vovsens nosser", but I think you'd get a few blank stares if you tried using it..

[n0r0imusha]

Hungarian

Kutyatöke in hungarian but thats not a praise either ( means dog's pumpkin, worse form is kutyafasza which is dog's dick )

you can use "tuti" which means top notch or király ( literally means king )

[Raumkraut]

Norwegian?

"Hundens balla" looks more like Swedish to me.

Granted, I'm no expert at Norwegian idioms or the intricacies of the language, but in Norwegian it could be "Hundens baller/boller". "Baller" means balls, as in sport, and "boller" can mean anything round-ish. That phrase could also be used to refer to tennis balls or such which belongs to the dog, and which dogs often love, so could be appropriate in meaning too.

Or you could use "Hundens egg" (egg is the same in singular or plural).

Although for some reason I quite prefer "Hundens plommer" (the dog's plums).

But knowing Norwegians' tendencies with English idioms, they'd probably just use the phrase in English.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Norwegian?

Swedish meat balls are köttbullar. Google translate for Swedish gives "dog's balls" as "hundens bollar" - but "the dog's balls" as "hundens kulor" - and "the dog's bollocks" as "hundens bollocks".

Google Translate then suggests Swedish alternatives for "bollocks" as skitsnack, skit, ballar, or struntprat.

To be truly fluent in an idiom needs a lot of exposure!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lion wrestler?

Is that the Hywel Llewelyn (sp?) Thomas who once wrestled a lion in someone's garage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hindi

In Hindi / Urdu you could say "Kutteh Ki Gotiya" which literally translates to the dog's marbles (Kutta meaning dog, and Kutteh being the possessive form, goti meaning marble, and gotiya the plural form)

[Yugguy]

Les balons de chien?

[Identity]

What? No Dutch?

Try klote hond

[Mark 85]

Well Done!!!

Even with the controversy and discussion continuing, well done Lester. We all can use some more colorful phrases in other languages.

[J 3]

Brazilian Portuguese

I can't believe none of my fellow lusophones has added our contribution to such worthy linguistic matter. I can't believe it's even closer to butter either, but that's a different pet peeve. Either way, Camões' language deserves better! And the World Cup is upon us, so you need to know what to say over here, or at least to your telly when your favorite footballer scores nicely.

First of all, the literal translation of "mutt's nuts" wouldn't have the British meaning here in Brazil, at least in the regions I am familiar with (the country is huge and there are very strange idioms and sayings in other regions that are not intelligible in others, so who knows...). But fret not, we do have an equivalent genital-based expression to provide; a very naughty language, (Braz.) Portuguese.

The literal translation could be "as bolas do cão" (the dog's balls, where ão is a sound that is allegedly exclusive from Portuguese, and sounds sort of like what you get if you say "uh" followed by a deep "mmm", quickly and very nasally). If you don't want to wrestle with the damn ão, you can use "cachorro", which is another word for dog, but that would make the saying much less snappy, admittedly. Also, if you want to keep the mutt (as in "of mixed-breed") element in the saying, use "vira-lata" (literally "turn-can", a dog who lives in the streets messing with trash cans to get food).

We have other ways to refer to the gonads, so you could also use "o saco" (the sac, scrotum) or

"os ovos" (the eggs) instead of "as bolas". I never promised it would be easy, or even less that it would be succinct. Not my style.

Now, the genital-based expression I promised earlier is "do caralho" (where "lho" is like the Italian "glio", i.e. something like "ly-oh" said quickly in English). It is somewhat NSFW (although we're not very shy with the swearing down here, and you might be surprised with what you can hear at work), and it literally means "of the cock", but not of the avian kind, obviously. When a Brazilian says something is "do caralho!", or the shortened version, "duca!", pronounced doo-kah, streess on the doo, as in booing, it means... it's the mutt's nuts. The species of the owner of the "caralho" is not specified here, but the meaning is still the same.

[A K Stiles]

Esperanto

La hundo testikoj

allegedly. Though it doesn't seem to have the alliterative or rhyming quality, or frankly anyone to understand what you were trying to say...

[Henry Minute]

Re: Esperanto

An alternative might be 'la æurovoj de virhundo'

[Johnny Canuck]

Klingon!

Ha'DIbaH QujmeH moQ

[Don Coglioni]

Thank you, thank you, thank you thrice for my naming.

I finally have a proper name.

Also, to further elaborate on the Canine Gonads Apprecciation Club's hot topic, here in sunny Italy you'd burst out in a Sicilian-dialect derived "Miiiiinchia!" (pron.: meeeèèèèeeeeeenkeeah) when you're particularly impressed with something (e.g. any old Lamborghini passing by, a lovely lady's derrière, the amount of the Revenue Service ticket you just collected from the postman..), or a more Milanese style "Figa!" (pron. Phèègah).

In the first case you are referencing the male organ (O pate d' 'e criature , "the father of children" in the Neapolitan lottery interpretation book, corresponding to number 29) , in the second the female one (Chella ca guarda 'nterra , The one facing the floor, in the same book , number 6 , cfr. : http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Smorfia ).

So there you have it.

[Mike Banahan]

Irish version

I looked for a version in Irish of 'bollocks' and only found the rather lame polite word for testicles. I'm not a native speaker but I'm sure someone here will be, so to set the ball(s) rolling I suggest we could start with magairlí na madra in the absence of a better translation.

I find it *exceptionally* hard to believe that Irish doesn't have several rude words specifically for that part of the anatomy, but of course they wouldn't be in my dictionary. Still ' Brísfaídh mé do magairlí' is apparently a not-uncommon interjection (I will break your balls) so perhaps it will do for the task.

[Irony Deficient]

Re: Irish version

Mike, my 1950s English-Irish dictionary gave two words for “mutt”: cloigneachán and blaoiscéir. In the other direction, my 1970s Irish-English dictionary defined these two words as “dunce” and “empty-headed person” respectively. (Neither dictionary contains impolite words.) Thinking that these translations might apply to an older definition of “mutt”, I looked in the OED; sure enough, “mutt” started out as an abbreviation of “muttonhead”, and in the early 20th century it was far more pejorative than it is now, an equal-opportunity term of contempt for humans, horses, or dogs.

I wonder if Irish simply nativized the English word “bollocks” — e.g. ballac (singular), ballaic (plural)? Curiously, the Irish word for “orchid” is magairlín (“testiclette”).

[BlueShiftNZ]

Way down under

In Maori, it would translate literally to "nga raho o te kuri" or "nga paoro o te kuri", depending on if you prefer testicles (raho) or balls (paoro).

You'd be more likely to describe something as "tu meke" though, which means awesome, cool, or "sweet as, bro".

[Jon Green]

Wondering about that Hokkien translation...

...'cos in Mandarin, the same character sequence " 狗胡说八道" (gou3 hu2 shuo1 ba1 dao4) reads as "Dog talks (or "talk") rubbish"!

[miknik]

DVLA translation

One of the best number plates I ever saw was K90 RBS, only it was spaced as K9 0RBS and had "The dogs bollocks"written underneath

[Anonymous Coward]

I was astonished to find that the French do use "dogs bollocks" as is, but francophone pronounced.

20 years ago, I described a rack of kit I built to French colleagues as "coueilles de chien", only to get "balls of the dog? .......AH... dogs bolleurks!! ". It may just be engineers that use it.

The French love wordplay, Ecking Fuxellent that I introduced in the wild then in that circle may still come back someday to haunt me.

[Irony Deficient]

Ecking Fuxellent

Eng Ed, if transmitted in written form, Fuxellent would probably be pronounced by francophones as /fyˈsɛl/ (“fü-SELL”).

[Heironymous Coward]

Czech

In Czech it's 'psi koule', but it doesn't have any meaning other than the literal one.

[Sandra Greer]

Merkin translation

If you said that in the U.S. it might raise a laugh, but I have never heard it actually used here. These are old usages: cat's pajamas, cat's meow, bee's knees. We tend to use single words that mean "cool". So we are right in the same boat as the rest of Europe.

Of course, British speakers of English, as the original users, may innovate without it being translatable.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x4912910

[Dr_N]

Re-French

"Les Couilles de Dogue" should work well.