{"id":11132,"date":"2015-04-17T17:17:50","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T16:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=11132"},"modified":"2015-04-17T17:17:50","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T16:17:50","slug":"carrying-coals-to-newcastle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=11132","title":{"rendered":"Carrying coals to Newcastle"},"content":{"rendered":"

An idiomatic way to say a task is pointless is to say it’s like carrying coals to Newcastle<\/strong> – Newcastle, in the north east of England, used to be a major coal mining area. <\/p>\n

In French the equivalent is porter de l’eau \u00e0 la rivi\u00e8re<\/em> (to carry water to the river).<\/p>\n

In German they say Eulen nach Athen bringen\/tragen<\/em> (to take\/bring owls to Athens).<\/p>\n

In Welsh there are quite a few equivalent expressions:<\/p>\n

– cario glo i Fflint = to carry coal to Flint (a former coal mining area)
\n– cario d\u0175r dros afon = to carry water across a river
\n– bwrw heli yn y m\u00f4r = to throw salt in the sea
\n– iro blonegen = to grease fat
\n– iro hwch \u00e2 bloneg = to grease a sow with fat
\n– gwerthu m\u00eal i berchen gwenyn = to sell honey to a bee keeper
\n– mynd i ‘ngheg i chwilio am fy nhafod = to go to my mouth and look for my tongue
\n– gyrru halen i’r Heledd = to send salt to a salt pit
\n– golchi traed alarch = to wash a swan’s feet
\n– taflu ‘fale i’r berllan = to throw apples into an orchard<\/p>\n

What about in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An idiomatic way to say a task is pointless is to say it’s like carrying coals to Newcastle – Newcastle, in the north east of England, used to be a major coal mining area. In French the equivalent is porter de l’eau \u00e0 la rivi\u00e8re (to carry water to the river). In German they say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,111,116,10,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-french","category-german","category-language","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}