Siitä puhe mistä puute...

[enk]

Does anyone know a phrase for "Siitä puhe mistä puute" in English?
Got asked and I have no idea for this rather commonly heard
Finnish proverb! '

For some other lovely Finnish proverbs in English, Wikipedia is a charm.

Thanks!
-enk

[Hank W.]

Can't say...

OK, if someone recognizes something: Literal translation "The (subject of the) talk is of what you miss/crave/need." Say someone talks about money a lot, so he's poor (as he's talking about what is missing). Usually a put-down someone yells "Oh F***" and someone retorts "so thats what you haven't gotten lately"

[enk]

No help there I know what it means, I just can't think of what
it might be in English .

-enk

[otyikondo]

Does anyone know a phrase for "Siitä puhe mistä puute" in English?
Got asked and I have no idea for this rather commonly heard
Finnish proverb! '

For some other lovely Finnish proverbs in English, Wikipedia is a charm.

Thanks!
-enk

Empty barrels make most noise.

Don't mention it.

[Hank W.]

Hmmm... I wouldn't pinpoint on that. Its not "empty boasting" as in "put your money where your mouth is".... closer to "sour grapes"...

[Mark I.]

As a concept, it's like "Freudian talk" (as there's "Freudian slip").

[otyikondo]

Hmmm... I wouldn't pinpoint on that. Its not "empty boasting" as in "put your money where your mouth is".... closer to "sour grapes"...

Since it is often used about people who talk the talk but are legless as far as the walk goes, I think it's a perfectly accurate rendition.

Niin... onko sinkuilla seksiälämää lainkaan? Mielenkiintoista, että täältä sinkkupalstalta löytyy seksi keskustelua. Eikös se vanha sanonta mene, että siitä puhe mistä puute...

A very quick Google produced this one.
http://eurosinkut.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=42860


And this one:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/joyhan/S3.html

Liukumiina (yleinen nainen)
Oletko koskaan kuullut puhuttavan runkkupuvusta? Jos olet käynyt armeijan niin varmasti olet. Runkkupukuhan on armeijan sininen yöpuku. Ja norsun v!%# on armeijan harmaa karvalakki. Yleensä ottaen armeijan yleisimmät siangisanat liittyvät seksuaalisuuteen - siitä puhe mistä puute!

or this one...

Suuri seksikeskustelu
Blogimaailmaa on kohauttanut nk. 'suuri seksikeskustelu'. Mikäs siinä. Minulle heräsi siitä seuraavia ajatuksia:

Siitä puhe mistä puute.
Seksistä ei pidä niin kovasti puhua, sitä pitää harrastaa.
http://www.uta.fi/~tlmihap/celibacy/128.html

Now, you could argue that there's sour grapes going on in these cases, but I'd charge that the purpose of the expression is to point out that those who make a lot of noise about something - in this instance their sexual adventures - are often the empty barrels.

I'd contrast it with the Isot kalat uivat syvissä vesissä type of "still waters run deep" expression. But what do I know?

[Mark I.]

Now, you could argue that there's sour grapes going on in these cases, but I'd charge that the purpose of the expression is to point out that those who make a lot of noise about something - in this instance their sexual adventures - are often the empty barrels.

I'd contrast it with the Isot kalat uivat syvissä vesissä type of "still waters run deep" expression. But what do I know?

I think "tyhjät tynnyrit kolisevat eniten" is completely another saying. That's because that barrel expression is used around *accusations*, while "siitä puhe mistä puute" is not. In most cases it's funny to even to the object of the saying, as that barrel -saying is never funny to the object.

[otyikondo]

Now, you could argue that there's sour grapes going on in these cases, but I'd charge that the purpose of the expression is to point out that those who make a lot of noise about something - in this instance their sexual adventures - are often the empty barrels.

I'd contrast it with the Isot kalat uivat syvissä vesissä type of "still waters run deep" expression. But what do I know?

I think "tyhjät tynnyrit kolisevat eniten" is completely another saying. That's because that barrel expression is used around *accusations*, while "siitä puhe mistä puute" is not. In most cases it's funny to even to the object of the saying, as that barrel -saying is never funny to the object.

http://www.nakokulma.net/keskustelu/ind ... pic=7115.0

This person, one Pipanella, disagrees:


Siitä puhe mistä puute, Tyhjät tynnyrit kolisee eniten, yms. silloin kun ne = Pää kiinni.

Syvällisiä latteuksia - good term.

[Horse]

Hmm, tricky one,

There's an eastern (Buddhist?) saying that says:

"Those who speak do not know, those who know do not speak".

Can't think of any English saying that comes close to the Finnish original. And while we are on the subject of people boring us with their fantastic sex lives...Many years ago the MG car company ran a billboard advertising campaign featuring a babe in one of their sports cars under the slogan "you can do it in an MG". On one of these billboards, some amateur advertising copy-writer added, in bright red spray paint, the words "don't bore us with your Triumphs"!

Horse

[sammy]

I always thought "sour grapes" would be more or less equal to the Finnish saying "happamia, sanoi kettu pihlajanmarjoista" - in the sense that you'd like to get X, but for some reason or another can't, so you say "I wouldn't want to have X anyway / I always thought X was rubbish". You always say negative things about X that you can't reach (like the fox said about the berries he could not reach...)

That's a somewhat different angle from "siitä puhe mistä puute". In that case, the talk is not usually in a negative sense. A youngster might e.g. continually be talking in a loud and boisterous fashion about sex & his personal sexual conquests, and then if you say "siitä puhe mistä puute" you are hinting that all the talk's just to cover his complete lack of it

So I'm not sure if there is a directly corresponding English saying...?

"Tyhjät tynnyrit kolisevat eniten" is also slightly different - that's just to say that empty-headed people make the most noise (shout, complain etc. all the time).

[sammy]

"Those who speak do not know, those who know do not speak".

Methinks this comes from Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching) by Lao Tse?

[otyikondo]

Now I'm not Finnish, so I'm going way out on a limb here, but...

is

"Tyhjät tynnyrit kolisevat eniten"

REALLY a Finnish expression? With a good long pedigree - like "Kivi uses it in this or that..."

I don't have the slightest shred of evidence on this one, but there is something fake about it that reeks of direct translation.

And I'm doggedly sticking to my original thesis that the term as such - at least the English term - is a reference to people talking most volubly about that which they know least. And that's how I interpret most usages of the siitä puhe mistä puute expression that I've come across. And I back Sammy on the sour grapes thing - "sour grapes" is about DENYING a heartfelt wish for something on the grounds that it is inaccessible, and not about rabbiting on about it as though you had it when you don't.

On a more general philosophical level, have you noticed that most of these platitudes and sayings come in pairs that effectively cancel one another out?

I mean, "faint heart never won fair lady" or "fortune favours the brave" or "strike while the iron is hot" or any of those "go do it" ones is kind of diametrically opposite to "better safe than sorry" or "discretion is the better part of valour".

And so on. The people who made these things up just wanted to have all their bases covered. So after you went and did that brave thing and got your face smacked, they'd have some trite remark to deliver about why you shouldn't have done it in the first place.

This is nice, though.

http://www.obvious.fsnet.co.uk/proverbs/proverbs.htm

[kalmisto]

"The mouth speaks what the heart is full of" ( said by Jesus ) :

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... version=74;

[sammy]

Now I'm not Finnish, so I'm going way out on a limb here, but...

is

"Tyhjät tynnyrit kolisevat eniten"

REALLY a Finnish expression? With a good long pedigree - like "Kivi uses it in this or that..."

It could actually be Swedish by origin, but I'm not sure. They do have Tomma tunnor bullrar mest which is the same, word by word.

And yes I agree with you - many of the so-called Words of Wisdom do cancel each others out - "birds of a feather..." VS "opposites attract"

(the former, incidentally, has also been given somewhere in the following guise: birds of a feather freeze in cold weather")