,,Ohne Fleiß, keinen Preis.” (If you want the prize you have to work for it – loosely: No pain, no gain.)
What’s the wackiest German idiom you’ve ever heard? Tell us in the comments!
This and many other German and English idioms are featured in the Barron’s 2001 German and English Idioms, Second Edition.
Knowing all these phrases is challenging for any non-native speaker, even a near-native speaker. Some of these idioms would be really, really confusing if you had no prior exposure to them, for example, from this book. I like this book, but be forewarned: it’s not really a beginner’s book, though it could benefit beginners, since you can look up idioms alphabetically and is kind of like a dictionary for idioms…but you couldn’t (accurately) call it The Complete Idioms Guide to German…since I’m sure there are some idioms left out. However, this book does held the reader with most of the most common ones.
