{"id":23922,"date":"2025-02-27T16:05:51","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T16:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23922"},"modified":"2025-03-02T14:05:49","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T14:05:49","slug":"swallowing-camels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23922","title":{"rendered":"Swallowing Camels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week my Danish lessons have been focusing on idioms, and an interesting idiom that came up is <strong>sluge en kamel<\/strong>, which literally means &#8216;to swallow a camel&#8217;, but what other meanings does it have? Let&#8217;s find out. <\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/christianehoej\/49589267211\/in\/photolist-74m3ZT-2iy2XtH-9MvCK3-bzVQ7f-2gCSFDv-9oj2nS-2j1wuSu-6yPycD-eZJRX1\" title=\"Kameler\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/49589267211_626a32cc1c_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" alt=\"Kameler\"\/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/sluge_en_kamel\">Wiktionary<\/a>, this idioms means &#8216;to accept a change or amendment (to a proposal)&#8217; or &#8216;to agree to something one would not have if one had fully understood the implications from the beginning&#8217;. <\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/ordnet.dk\/ddo\/ordbog?subentry_id=59004808&#038;query=sluge+en+kamel\">Den Danske Ordbog<\/a>, it means &#8216;acceptere eller g\u00e5 med til noget der egentlig strider imod ens idealer og \u00f8nsker&#8217; (to accept or agree to something that actually goes against one&#8217;s ideals and desires), and another version of the idiom is <strong>sluge kamelen<\/strong> (to eat the camel).<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/speakandlearn.dk\/at-sluge-en-kamel\/\">SpeakAndLearn.dk<\/a>, it means &#8216;to admit that you are wrong, even though you have clearly stated that you were absolutely sure, that you were right&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>So it seems it has a variety of meanings. Are there similar idioms involving camels in other languages?<\/p>\n<p>In English, you might liken doing something unpleasant or undesirable to swallowing a frog &#8211; Mark Twain is sometimes quoted as having said or written &#8220;Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.&#8221; There&#8217;s apparently no evidence that he did in fact say or write this. The idea of eating a frog in the morning possibly comes from Nicolas Chamfort, a French writer, who wrote in the 1790s:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230; il faudrait avaler un crapaud tous les matins, pour ne trouver plus rien de d\u00e9go\u00fbtant le reste de la journ\u00e9e, &#8230; (it would be necessary to swallow a toad every morning so as not to find anything else disgusting during the rest of the day)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> [<a href=\"https:\/\/quoteinvestigator.com\/2013\/04\/03\/eat-frog\/\">source<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Other interesting Danish idioms involving animals include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>klap lige hesten<\/strong> (&#8216;just pat the horse&#8217;) = shut up, relax, take it easy<\/li>\n<li><strong>det bl\u00e6ser en halv pelikan<\/strong> (&#8216;it&#8217;s blowing half a pelican&#8217;) = it&#8217;s very windy and the weather is awful<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jeg har ikke en r\u00f8d reje<\/strong> (&#8216;I don&#8217;t have a red shrimp&#8217;) = I&#8217;m skint, I have no money<\/li>\n<li><strong>ingen ko p\u00e5 isen<\/strong> (&#8216;no cow on the ice&#8217;) = everything is okay &#8211; whatever the problem is, it&#8217;s not a big deal so don&#8217;t worry about it<\/li>\n<li><strong>s\u00e5 er den ged barberet<\/strong> (&#8216;then the goat is shaved&#8217;) = the work has been done, or the problem has been resolved<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/ling-app.com\/da\/funny-danish-phrases\/\">https:\/\/ling-app.com\/da\/funny-danish-phrases\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.japanesepod101.com\/member\/go.php?r=759259&amp;i=b0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/banners\/banner_japanesepod.jpg\" alt=\"The Fastest Way to Learn Japanese Guaranteed with JapanesePod101.com\" width=\"630\" height=\"83\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week my Danish lessons have been focusing on idioms, and an interesting idiom that came up is sluge en kamel, which literally means &#8216;to swallow a camel&#8217;, but what other meanings does it have? Let&#8217;s find out. According to Wiktionary, this idioms means &#8216;to accept a change or amendment (to a proposal)&#8217; or &#8216;to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,104,125,10,78],"tags":[356,165,164,158,357,355,138,281,358,163],"class_list":["post-23922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-danish","category-english","category-idioms","category-language","category-words-and-phrases","tag-camels","tag-danish","tag-english","tag-etymology","tag-frogs","tag-idioms","tag-language","tag-omniglot","tag-toads","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23922","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=23922"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23928,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23922\/revisions\/23928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}