Italian is even more awesome: the proverb Piove sempre sul bagnato (lit. ‘it always rain on the wet’) says the same thing in eight syllables. :-)
(There was once a discussion in Italy about whether to stop teaching Latin in a certain type of high schools. Someone said that Latin should be taught because it’s the intellectual equivalent of high-nutrient food, giving the example of the proverb Homini fingunt et credunt and pointing out that a literal translation (‘People feign and believe’) would be nearly meaningless, and an actually meaningful translation (‘People make up things and then they end up believing them themselves’) wouldn’t be as terse and catchy. But ISTM that all natural languages have proverbs whose point is not immediately obvious from the literal meaning, so that’s hardly an argument as to why one particular language should be taught.)
Italian is even more awesome: the proverb Piove sempre sul bagnato (lit. ‘it always rain on the wet’) says the same thing in eight syllables. :-)
(There was once a discussion in Italy about whether to stop teaching Latin in a certain type of high schools. Someone said that Latin should be taught because it’s the intellectual equivalent of high-nutrient food, giving the example of the proverb Homini fingunt et credunt and pointing out that a literal translation (‘People feign and believe’) would be nearly meaningless, and an actually meaningful translation (‘People make up things and then they end up believing them themselves’) wouldn’t be as terse and catchy. But ISTM that all natural languages have proverbs whose point is not immediately obvious from the literal meaning, so that’s hardly an argument as to why one particular language should be taught.)