There's a Chinese phrase: (archaic usage) 置喙 zhìhuì / "to-place beak" / "to stick one's beak into something" = to interfere / interrupt
Interestingly, the Italian phrase is exactly the same: non metterci becco / "not put beak"!
Update, 311217: My Italian friend Valerio says his Peruvian friend Ari says the Spanish have the same phrase: meter el pico / "put the beak".
Maybe the link between the Italian and Spanish is the fact that they're both Romance languages.
Update 170218:
Spanish: no meter la nariz (also: el pico) (Thanks to Ben Vickers)
Catalan: no ficar el nas (Thanks to Ben Vickers)
Both "nariz" and "nas" mean "nose" (which is closer to the English version "to stick one's nose into something"), so the Romance language rule doesn't work here.
Romance | rə(ʊ)ˈmans, ˈrəʊmans | adjective: relating to or denoting the group of Indo-European languages descended from Latin, principally French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, Occitan, and Romanian: the Romance languages.
[mass noun] the Romance languages considered as a group.
ORIGIN: Middle English (originally denoting the vernacular language of France as opposed to Latin): from Old French romanz, based on Latin Romanicus ‘Roman’.
Update 250619:
Polish: nie wtykaj nosa w nie swoje sprawy / don’t put your nose into what’s not your business
That is interesting
ReplyDeleteWhat would the closest English equivalent be?
I wonder if there’s something involving brds’ beaks in other languages... why would it be just Chinese and Italian ?
From a Spanish speaking friend:
ReplyDeleteIn Spanish there is "meter el pico".
It means to butt in a conversation unwelcome.
What's amazing about the Chinese and Italian versions is the fact that they both use "beak".
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