Note: Dutch does it worse (IMbiasedO, as a native English speaker learning it), where they're actually one word (like it were "upclean"), but the front part can break off and float to the end of the sentence much of the time.
I've noticed (although can't remember an example right now) that sometimes the sentence can have a slightly different meaning if the preposition goes to the end.
Another thing with English is that the word order is very important as it conveys a lot of meaning; in, for example, Slavic languages it is less critical as meaning relies heavily on various word forms.
The order is still important in individual phrases: e.g. in Croatian, "dobar dan" (good day, a common greeting) would sound strange if the order is reversed. On the other hand "danas je dobar dan" (today is a good day), "dobar dan je danas" and "dobar dan danas je" are pretty much the same, in the descending order of common usage and "correctness". In all three examples the emphasis would be on the word indicating the point being made: "danas" if it's a good day as opposed to yesterday or another day, "je" if pointing out that it really is a good day, "dobar" (most commonly) in opposition to a bad (or neutral) day, and "dan" in opposition to a night.
To be clear, the sentence order is not completely irrelevant: it is commonly used (like in English) to turn a statement into a question (in speech usually with the emphasis shift). In the example above, "is today a good day?" would be "je (li) danas dobar dan?"
Example: https://img.joemonster.org/mg/albums/userpics/10001/prefix.j...
There's over 30 different pre- and post- fixes that can be added to any version of "fuck" (and Polish has several levels of vulgar verbs for "to fuck" coming from different roots: jebać, pierdolić, pieprzyć), and they each have slightly different primary and secondary meanings, for example:
najebać/napierdolić (się) = to get completely drunk
najebać/wjebać/wpieprzyć/wpierdolić (komuś) = to beat (someone) up
jebnąć (w coś) = to hit (into something)
podjebać/podpierdolić/podpieprzyć (coś) = to steal (something)
podpierdolić/podjebać (kogoś) = to backstab (someone)
spierdalać/spieprzać = to escape
spierdolić/zjebać/spieprzyć = to fuck up something (you had a chance and wasted it in spectacular manner)
wypierdolić/wyjebać/wypieprzyć (coś) = to throw (something) out
wypierdolić/wyjebać/wypieprzyć (się) = to fall spectacularly
wpierdolić (coś w/do czegoś) = to put (something in something)
pierdolnąć (coś na coś) = to put (something on something)
napierdolić/napieprzyć = to put too much of something
nawpierdalać/nawpieprzać (się) = to eat too much
wpierdolić (coś) = to eat a whole dish at once
odjebało/odpierdoliło (mu) = (he) become insane
wjebać/wpierdolić/wpieprzyć (się) = to get into inescapable situation because of your mistake
odjebać/odpierdolić (coś) = to do (something) crazy/amazing/unbeliveable
rozjebać/rozpierdolić/rozpieprzyć = to destroy something violently
zapierdolić/zajebać (kogoś) = to kill (someone)
the list goes on and on :)
The root word determines the level of vulgarity and the pre/post fixes determine the meaning. These prefixes also work with nonvulgar words, but average word only supports several of them, not all at once.
Most Slavic languages have similar constructions (but the exact meanings are often swapped).
I can translate each of English vulgar fuck+sth into several versions of Polish fuck+sth. For example "fuck off" would be "odwal się" (mildly vulgar, but rude), "odpieprz się" (definitely vulgar) or "odpierdol się" (very vulgar). An in the meaning of "go out" "fuck off" would be "spieprzaj" or "spierdalaj".
But there's no direct equivalents in English for most of the examples I gave in my previous post. Yes you can say "I fucking ate too much", but that's the equivalent of "zjadłem, kurwa, za dużo", and not of any of these verbs. The nuance is lost :)
So I rest my case - cursing in English is very limited. Which isn't good or bad, just interesting how languages differ.
There's more than one way to skin a cat.
The whole nine yards.
Also, there was a thread where a lot of foreigner CS students use english words because many of the words don't have direct translations or sensible translations - like mouse.
"There are multiple valid solutions for a given problem"
Skinning a cat is not a common thing. It’s not a normal food for English speakers, so the phrase carries some sense that what you’re doing is unusual.
It’s usually applied to a situation completely unrelated to skinning or otherwise preparing food, so it carries some sense of absurdity.
Most people using the phrase have never skinned anything, so there’s (usually!) a sense of ignorance on both sides.
Your translation brings none of that.
If I were to translate that idiom back to English and aim for accuracy, it would be something like, “what you’re doing is unusual, and neither of us have experience doing it, and the way you’re doing it is different than the ways I have heard of, but I suppose there’s more than one valid way to do it.” Which, I think, fits the spirit of the other examples - a very short expression that carries tons of unspoken cultural context with it, to the point that there isn’t a direct translation.
"There are multiple valid solutions for a given problem"
This Economist article[1] posits that it is actually slang for sexual intercourse based on the phrase "skin the cat"[2] first recorded in 1837 being a euphemism for it. This interpretation would also fit with the above quote. The same article also points out that:
'And the rather violent act of skinning a cat is no easy thing, says John Youngaitis, a taxidermist in New York. “There is not more than one way to skin a cat.”'
From[0] we can also see that in 1678 English naturalist John Ray said in his “Collection of English Proverbs”: “There are more ways to kill a dog than hanging”.
So it seems it is possible that the contemporary phrase exists to change a less common activity for a more common one. In this case use of the idiom would not convey the sense of doing something unusual.
[0] https://www.bnd.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/answer-man/arti...
[1] https://www.economist.com/prospero/2013/10/09/shooting-skinn...
Many proverbs in different languages have a common meaning but a different way to "deliver" it, I always find amusing how a differnt language/culture gets to the same point with completely different means.
Edit: doh. I forgot there is a word for that: portmanteau.
FWIW, "situational comedy" is not something that a english speaking person would normally say (or even necessarily understand without context), and likewise the literal Portuguese translation ("comédia situacional") is extremely unlikely to evoke a mental image of "Friends" the way that "sitcom" does in English. If I had to attempt to explain what "sitcom" means to a brazilian person, I might instead say something like "série de comédia americana", which translates literally to "american comedy series".
In Japanese, there's the word "pasocon" (portmanteau of personal computer). Obviously here in the west, nobody would use that combination of words that way.
So I think which portmanteaus exist in a language is a function of the originating culture, which is an interesting phenomenon on its own.
The more interesting part of Japanese portmanteaus is the use of the first two mora from each word, where English speakers would try to fit head to tail, like “persoputer” or something. But I guess in an agglutinative language, the end of a word is a much fuzzier concept.
Hmm, I think abbreviations are more common. Case in point, personal computer is usually abbreviated to PC.
But PC nowadays has a connotation of a non-Apple computer. Just goes to show how much nuance culture bring into the picture!